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Urban-Rural Rising Income Inequality in China

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Urban-rural Rising Income Inequality in China
As a developing country, China is trying to develop its economy and solving the threat of poverty since the economic reform. As a well-known economist Arthur Lewis said that "development must be inegalitarian because it does not start in every part of the economy at the same time" in 1954 (Lewis, 1954). It is also true for China. The income inequality issue between poor and rich increased faster, which has a negative impact as China tries to become a more stable society. The gap between rich and poor is caused by complex factors. This paper is intended to discover and explain the issue of income inequality through urban-rural gap, and also give some suggestions according to today’s situation.
Historical Analysis
In pre-reform, China is very poor and has about 90% rural population (Knight et al., 2004). At that time, Gini coefficient measure income distribution is 0.280 (0 means perfect equality, and 1 means extreme inequality) (Naughton, 2007, p.217), which shows that Chinese people has almost equal income across the whole republic. Although it is good to show China is “one of the most equal countries in the world”(Naughton, 2007, p.217), the truth is that everyone is equally poor at the same time. In order to decline poverty and connect the new republic to the world, the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping institute market reform and said “let some people get rich first”(The economist, 2001). Since then, China has maintained rapid growth economies in the world and has a large decline in poverty; however, it brings a big threat that income inequality increase significantly between urban and rural people. As Naughton records in his book in 2001, the China’s Gini coefficient has reached to 0.447 (Naughton, 2007, p.217),which exceeded the international recognized danger level of 0.4 (Tobin, 2011). The Gini degree, however, is still increasing. In 2010, BBC news indicates that China’s Gini coefficient has reached to 0.47 (Tobin, 2011) which is close to 0.5.
Urban-rural Income Gap
Since the early 1980, both in urban and rural areas, the income gap between regions expand continuously. After economic reform, the urban area is growing rapidly than rural area. As an evidence, the figure 9.2 shows that both rural and urban Gini coefficient curve increase, and rural inequality is higher than urban inequality (Naughton, 2007, p.218) that relates back to the topic of “income inequality” discussed in class.

Note. the figure is from Naughton, B.(2007). The Chinese Economy: Transition and growth. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

In order to more directly reflect the level of income difference between urban and rural, BBC news indicates that urban area’s people has an average annual earnings of 19100 yuan ($2900) which is more than three times of rural people’s earnings 5900 yuan ($898) in 2010 (Tobin, 2011). The following will discuss the reasons for income gap between urban and rural areas:
Unequal geographical condition and transportation
China is a vast country and different regions faced different initial conditions in the early stage of reform, which results the different outputs during the reform process period. Since the lack of technology and capital conditions results people earn less income in rural area than urban area. Especially after joining the WTO, the urban coastal areas’ people benefits first. They welcome investment from foreign countries to attract capital, and increase the production and the foreign trade. Through the opening policy, the local economy has developed quickly. Moreover, in the factor of transportation, urban has many ports, dense road and railway networks, which is also a comparable advantage than rural area. The convenient and fast transportation promote the urban construction and development. Rural mainland area is lagged far behind the urban coastal areas on economic growth, and the regional income gap become larger than before.
Unequal educational opportunity
Education is a big factor to future economic growth, and it will widen the gap between educated people and uneducated people. The educated people have higher capacity and they can take higher income position. The gap in education in different area is quite obvious. The urban areas have better education facilities and well trained teaching crew; in contrast, the rural areas cannot afford the same level of education resources suffer from shortage of capital. If the income inequality still increases, it will become a vicious circle. The high income people can afford a high level education and health care to their children, and then their children will benefit from that and get better jobs. Thereby, the rural regions’ per capita level of education is far lower than the urban regions, which results that rural people will continue to be poor.
The Suggestions
Government should make new policies to increase low-income people’s earnings to reduce income differences. First, government should stabilize the agricultural production and increase the investment in agriculture. The government can control the price of output and encourage farmers to plant more variable type of products, so that the stable price and more opportunities will increase their profits. Also, they may gradually slow down the urbanization, and try to move the investment and capital to contribute to the rural areas. Second, education, wealth and health care are the most important factors in the overall developing of country. The government should cover some of the education cost for rural areas, and build more schools and education facilities for both children and adults. At the same time, the education system should give more financial and political benefits to those teachers who are willing to help teaching in rural areas. Moreover, transportation is one of the disadvantages for rural area. As an increase in transportation in rural area will bring more capital and investment opportunities, and rural area will gain more from trade. Finally, a good solution proposed on BBC news by Dr. Tobin is to cut income tax from rural areas (Tobin, 2011), so that it will remove their tax pressure and increase their profits.
China’s regional income inequality’s issue has become a very serious problem. The analysis has illuminated the current situation of income gap, its reasons and suggestions that relative to geography and education factors. It is clear that the income gap is bound to occur at the stage of Chinese economic development process, but some of them can be avoided. While China now is still on the stage of developing, it needs a comprehensive approach to the problem that includes political and social improvements.

References
Knight, J., Li, S. , &Song, L. (2004, March). The Rural-Urban Divide and the Evolution of Political Economy in China. Retrieved October 17 2011, from http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/Knight_paper_griffin_conference.pdf
Lewis, W. Arthur. (1954). Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labor. Manchester School.
Naughton, B.(2007). The Chinese Economy: Transition and growth. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Tobin, D.(2011, June 28). Inequality in China: Rural poverty persists as urban wealth balloons. Retrieved October 17 2011, from BBC Website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ news/mobile/business-13945072 The economist.( 2001, May 31). To each according to his abilities. Retrieved October 16 2011, from http://www.economist.com/node/639652

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