Understanding Inequality in China

Xiaogang Wu is Yufeng Global Professor of Social Science, Professor of Sociology at New York University, USA, and NYU Shanghai, China, and Founding Director of Center for Applied Social and Economic Research (CASER) at NYU Shanghai, China. Wu is a leading scholar in research on Chinese inequality and social stratification. He has published over 70 articles in peer-reviewed journals. He has been serving as Chief Editor of the Chinese Sociological Review since 2011, Associate Editor (Social Stratification) of Sociology Compass (2023–2025), and Global Scholar at Princeton University, USA (2020–2024).Jia Miao is Assistant Professor of Sociology at NYU Shanghai, China. Her research investigates how urban neighbourhoods affect social cohesion, health inequality, productive aging, and individual subjective well-being in the Asian context. She is also interested in the social consequences of homeownership in large Chinese cities. Her work has appeared in Social Science and Medicine, Social Forces, and among others.

• Introduction 1. The Chinese General Social Survey (2003-8): Sample Designs and Data Evaluation 2. The Household Registration System and Rural-Urban Educational Inequality in Contemporary China 3. Redrawing the Boundaries: Work Units and Social Stratification in Urban China 4. Job Mobility in Postreform Urban China 5. Between State and Market: Hukou, Nonstandard Employment, and Bad Jobs in Urban China 6. Intergenerational Mobility in Contemporary China 7. Higher Education Expansion and Social Stratification in China 8. Chinese Adulthood Higher Education: Life-Course Dynamics Under State Socialism 9. Key-Point Schools and Entry into Tertiary Education in China 10. Hukou stratification, class structure, and earnings in transitional China 11. Income Inequality in Urban China, 1978-2005 12. Earnings returns to tertiary education in urban China, 1988–2008 13. Understanding the consequence of higher educational expansion in China: a double-treatment perspective