Fleshing out the olive? Observations on income polarization in China since 1981

Martin Ravallion and Shaohua Chen

China Economic Review, 2022, vol. 76, issue C

Abstract: In a rare example of a national goal for income distribution besides reducing poverty (for which there is a broad consensus), China's leadership committed in 2021 to attaining a less polarized “olive-shaped” distribution. The paper argues that the Foster-Wolfson polarization curve and index are well suited to quantifying this goal. New estimates indicate that polarization has been on a rising trend since 1981, but with a de-polarizing reversal emerging around 2009. There is no robust time-series evidence of polarizing effects of economic growth, poverty reduction or population urbanization. Larger urban-rural gaps in mean incomes have been strongly polarizing.

Keywords: China; Polarization; Inequality; Growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I32 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1043951X22001298
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:chieco:v:76:y:2022:i:c:s1043951x22001298

DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2022.101871

Access Statistics for this article

China Economic Review is currently edited by B.M. Fleisher, K. X. D. Huang, M.E. Lovely, Y. Wen, X. Zhang and X. Zhu

More articles in China Economic Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().