Rising Inequality in China

Li Shi is China's leading specialist on inequality and poverty in China. He has served as the acting director of the China Institute of Income Distribution at Beijing Normal University since 2011. His numerous published works include Inequality and Public Policy in China with Björn Gustafsson and Terry Sicular (Cambridge, 2008), Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty in Urban China with Hiroshi Sato (2003) and numerous articles in Chinese and Western scholarly journals. He has won many academic prizes, including the Sun Yefang Prize for Economic Science (1994 and 2011) and the Zhang Peigang Prize for Development Economics (2010). Hiroshi Sato has published many works on topics related to development economics and inequality in China and elsewhere. He is co-editor of Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty in Urban China (2003), author of The Growth of Market Relations in Post-Reform Rural China (2003) and has contributed to numerous works including Inequality and Public Policy in China. He received the IDE Prize for Research on Developing Economies in 2004 for his Japanese book Shotoku Kakusa to Hinkon (Income Inequality and Poverty, 2003). Terry Sicular is a leading North American specialist on the Chinese economy and has written extensively on inequality, poverty, the labor market and the rural economy in China. She is a co-editor of and contributor to Inequality and Public Policy in China. Her major works have appeared in the Review of Income and Wealth, the Journal of Development Economics and the Economic Journal. She is a recipient of the Zhang Peigang Prize for Development Economics (2010) and the Sun Yefang Prize for Economic Science (2011).

• 1. Introduction: rising inequality in China Li Shi, Hiroshi Sato and Terry Sicular; 2. Overview: income inequality and poverty in China, 2002–7 Li Shi, Luo Chuliang and Terry Sicular; 3. Housing ownership, incomes, and inequality in China, 2002–7 Hiroshi Sato, Terry Sicular and Yue Ximing; 4. Educational inequality in China: the intergenerational dimension John Knight, Terry Sicular and Yue Ximing; 5. Inequality and poverty in rural China Luo Chuliang and Terry Sicular; 6. The evolution of the migrant labor market in China, 2002–7 John Knight, Deng Quheng and Li Shi; 7. A new episode of increased urban income inequality in China Deng Quheng and Björn Gustafsson; 8. Unemployment and the rising number of non-workers in urban China: causes and distributional consequences Björn Gustafsson and Ding Sai; 9. Do employees in the public sector still enjoy earnings advantages? Yang Juan, Sylvie Démurger and Li Shi; 10. Redistributive impacts of personal income tax in urban China Xu Jing and Yue Ximing; 11. Changes in the gender wage gap in urban China, 1995–2007 Li Shi and Song Jin; 12. Inter-temporal changes in ethnic urban earnings disparities in China Ding Sai, Li Shi and Samuel L. Myers, Jr; Appendix I. The 2007 household surveys: sampling methods and data description Luo Chuliang, Li Shi, Terry Sicular, Deng Quheng and Yue Ximing; Appendix II. The 2002 and 2007 CHIP surveys: sampling, weights, and combining the urban, rural, and migrant samples Song Jin, Terry Sicular and Yue Ximing.

'Inequality - in incomes, in education, in opportunities - is one of the most important issues that China will have to deal with in the coming decades. This work edited by Li, Sato, and Sicular is the definitive book on China's inequality. Based on high-quality data and careful analysis and clear presentation, we see that the challenge of dealing with inequality today and in the coming years is great indeed.' Scott Rozelle, Stanford University