Emergence of urban poverty and inequality in China: evidence from household survey

Economic reform, education expansion, and earnings inequality for urban males in China, 1988–2009

“…The survey was conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics annually since 1956, and was resumed in 1980 after its suspension during the Cultural Revolution-1966-1976(Fang et al 2002. The electronic data are available from 1986.…”

“…Basic individual demographic and human capital variables are also available. The data have been widely used to analyse income inequality, poverty, rates of return to education, and household savings in China (see, for example, Han, Wailes, and Cramer, 1995;Fang et al, 2002;Gibson, Huang, and Rozelle, 2003;Meng, Gregory, and Wang, 2005b;Zhang, Zhao, Park, and Song, 2005;Meng, Gregory and Wan, 2007;and Chamon and Prasad, 2008). 4 The UHIES questionnaire changed four times in 1988, 1992, 1996, and 2002 As this study is on male earnings inequality, the sample includes male individuals aged 20 to 60 who are working and have a positive wage at the survey year.…”

Housing inequality and housing poverty in urban China in the late 1990s

“…This paper elaborates Bian and Logan's studies by employing imputed rent (rental value of owned housing) as the comprehensive measure of housing quality, while Bian and Logan used living space and facilities. This paper also develops the arguments of Wang (2000) and Fang et al (2002) by employing more comprehensive data on urban housing conditions that cover both urban residents and migrants of rural origin. This paper is organized into five sections.…”

“…Bian and Logan (1997) and Logan, Bian, and Bian (1999) have argued, using the 1993 household survey conducted in Tianjin and Shanghai, that older workers with higher income, those who have party membership, and workers who belong to large work units can access better housing. Using the official urban household surveys of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) from 1992 to 1998, Fang, Zhang, and Fan (2002) found that, for the lowincome urban households, the rate of increase in expenditures on housing has outpaced the rate of income growth, making the poor more vulnerable to sudden shocks. Based on fieldwork in Beijing and Shanghai in the late 1990s, Wang (2000) found that, in addition to the problem of urban residents who live in relatively poor housing conditions, a newly emerging incidence of housing poverty among the poor migrants of rural origin was growing, although not recognized by the government.…”

Why do Poverty Rates Differ from Region to Region? The Case of Urban China

“…There have been several attempts at assessing the scale of urban poverty and decomposing changes in poverty over time into a growth and a redistributive component. See, for example, Chen and Wang (2001), Khan and Riskin (2001), Fang et al (2002) and Hussain (2003). In all these studies, the spatial variation of urban poverty is only treated in passing.…”