Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Rising Regional Inequality in China: Fact or Artefact?

Contents:

Author Info

  • Chao Li

    () (University of Waikato)

  • John Gibson

    () (University of Waikato)

Abstract

China’s local populations can be counted in two ways; by how many people have hukou household registration from each place and by how many people actually reside in each place. The counts differ by the non-hukou migrants – people that move from their place of registration – who have grown from fewer than five million when reform began in 1978 to over 200 million by 2010. For most of the first three decades of the reform era, the hukou count was used to produce per capita GDP figures. In coastal provinces the resident count is many millions more than the hukou count, while for migrant-sending provinces it is the reverse, creating a systematic and time-varying distortion in provincial GDP per capita. Moreover, a sharp discontinuity occurred when provinces recently switched from the hukou count to the resident count when reporting GDP per capita. A double-count also resulted because some provinces switched before others and initial resident counts were incomplete. This paper describes the changing definition of provincial populations in China and their impact on inequality in provincial GDP per capita. We show that much of the apparent increase in inter-provincial inequality disappears once a consistent series of GDP per resident is used.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: ftp://mngt.waikato.ac.nz/RePEc/wai/econwp/1209.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by University of Waikato, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers in Economics with number 12/09.

as in new window
Length: 24 pages
Date of creation: 18 Jul 2012
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:wai:econwp:12/09

Contact details of provider:
Postal: Private Bag 3105, Hamilton, New Zealand, 3240
Phone: + 64 (0)7 838 4758 (Administrator)
Fax: + 64 7 838 4331
Email:
Web page: http://cms.mngt.waikato.ac.nz/departments/economics
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: inequality; growth; regional development; population; China;

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Holz, Carsten A., 2004. "Deconstructing China's GDP statistics," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 164-202.
  2. Chen, Jian & Fleisher, Belton M., 1996. "Regional Income Inequality and Economic Growth in China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 141-164, April.
  3. Ravi Kanbur & Xiaobo Zhang, 2005. "Fifty Years of Regional Inequality in China: a Journey Through Central Planning, Reform, and Openness," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(1), pages 87-106, 02.
  4. John Gibson & Bonggeun Kim, 2009. "Non-Classical Measurement Error in Long-Term Retrospective Recall Surveys," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-658, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
  5. Gregory Chow, 2006. "Are Chinese Official Statistics Reliable?," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo, vol. 52(2), pages 396-414, June.
  6. Loren Brandt & Carsten A. Holz, 2006. "Spatial Price Differences in China: Estimates and Implications," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55, pages 43-86.
  7. Rawski, Thomas G. & Xiao, Wei, 2001. "Roundtable on Chinese Economic Statistics Introduction," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 298-302.
  8. Jr-Tsung Huang & Chun-Chien Kuo & An-Pang Kao, 2003. "The Inequality of Regional Economic Development in China between 1991 and 2001," Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 1(3), pages 273-285.
  9. Fan, Shenggen & Kanbur, Ravi & Zhang, Xiaobo, 2008. "Regional Inequality In China: An Overview," Working Papers 51157, Cornell University, Department of Applied Economics and Management.
  10. Abhijit Banerjee & Esther Duflo & Nancy Qian, 2012. "On the Road: Access to Transportation Infrastructure and Economic Growth in China," NBER Working Papers 17897, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  11. Harry X. Wu, 2007. "The Chinese GDP Growth Rate Puzzle: How Fast Has the Chinese Economy Grown?," Asian Economic Papers, MIT Press, vol. 6(1), pages 1-23, February.
  12. Max Lu, 2002. "Forging Ahead and Falling Behind: Changing Regional Inequalities in Post-reform China," Growth and Change, Gatton College of Business and Economics, University of Kentucky, vol. 33(1), pages 42-71.
  13. Masashi Hoshino, 2011. "Measurement of GDP per capita and regional disparities in China, 1979-2009," Discussion Paper Series DP2011-17, Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University, revised Apr 2011.
  14. Roberts, Mark & Deichmann, Uwe & Fingleton, Bernard & Shi, Tuo, 2012. "Evaluating China's road to prosperity: A new economic geography approach," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(4), pages 580-594.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. Rising regional inequality in China: fact or artefact?
    by John Gibson in East Asia Forum on 2012-08-12 12:00:23
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Chao Li & John Gibson, 2013. "Spatial Price Differences and Inequality in China: Housing Market Evidence," Working Papers in Economics 13/06, University of Waikato, Department of Economics.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wai:econwp:12/09

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Brian Silverstone).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.