Citation
Zhang, Yin & Wan, Guanghua (2008). Poverty Reduction in China: Trends and Causes. In Wan, Guanghua (Ed.), Inequality and Growth in Modern China (pp. 13). Oxford University Press.Abstract
This chapter investigates the trends and causes of poverty in China in the 1990s by applying the Shapley decomposition to unit-record household survey data. The changes in poverty trends are attributed to two proximate causes; income growth and shifts in relative income distribution. The Foster-Greer-Thorbecke measures are computed and decomposed, with different datasets and alternative assumptions about poverty lines and equivalence scales. Among the robust results are: (1) both income growth and favourable distributional changes can explain China's remarkable achievement in combating poverty in rural areas during the first half of the 1990s; and (2) in the second half of the 1990s, both rural and urban China suffered from rapidly rising inequality and stagnant income growth, leading to a slow-down in poverty reduction, even reversal of poverty trend.
URL
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199535194.003.0003Reference Type
Book ChapterYear Published
2008Author(s)
Zhang, YinWan, Guanghua