Inequality and Public Policy in China

• List of Tables and figures; Contributors; Acknowledgements; 1. Inequality and public policy in China: issues and trends Björn Gustafsson, Li Shi, and Terry Sicular; 2. Income inequality and spatial differences in China, 1988, 1995, and 2002 Björn Gustafsson, Li Shi, Terry Sicular, and Yue Ximing; 3. Growth and distribution of household income in China between 1995 and 2002 Azizur Rahman Khan and Carl Riskin; 4. Explaining incomes and inequality in China Yue Ximing, Terry Sicular, Li Shi, and Björn Gustafsson; 5. The distribution of wealth in China Zhao Renwei and Ding Sai; 6. Growth, inequality, and poverty: a comparative study of China's experience in the periods before and after the Asian crisis Azizur Rahman Khan; 7. What has economic transition meant for the well-being of the elderly in China? Edward Palmer and Deng Quheng; 8. Inequality in financing China's health care Wei Zhong and Björn Gustafsson; 9. China's emerging urban wage structure, 1995–2002 John Knight and Lina Song; 10. Unemployment, earlier retirement and changes in the gender income gap in urban China, 1995–2002 Li Shi and Björn Gustafsson; 11. What determines living arrangements of the elderly in urban China? Meng Xin and Luo Chuliang; 12. The impact of village-specific factors on household income in rural China Hiroshi Sato; 13. The redistributive impact of taxation in rural China, 1995–2002: an evaluation of rural taxation reform at the turn of the century Hiroshi Sato, Li Shi, and Yue Ximing; Appendix: the 1995 and 2002 household surveys: sampling methods and data description Li Shi, Luo Chuliang, Wei Zhong, and Yue Ximing; Index.

Review of the hardback: 'Although rapid widening income inequality in China is widely recognized as one of the country's foremost policy challenges, analysis of income distribution trends has been severely hampered by data weaknesses. This volume is a major step forward in providing policy-makers and analysts with the necessary reliable data on long-term trends in key indicators of income distribution from across China, including some particularly welcome new data from domestic migrants living in urban areas. That data provides the basis for a set of papers by an outstanding group of Chinese and foreign scholars, in which the linkages between recent trends and public policy - both the ways in which policy has influenced those trends, and the implications of these trends for current policy - are rigorously and imaginatively analyzed.' Bill Bikales, UNDP, China