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FORCES SHAPING CHINA'S INTERPROVINCIAL INEQUALITY
Author(s) -
Tsui Kaiyuen
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
review of income and wealth
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.024
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1475-4991
pISSN - 0034-6586
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-4991.2007.00218.x
Subject(s) - total factor productivity , economics , inequality , china , differential (mechanical device) , distribution (mathematics) , capital (architecture) , per capita , productivity , development economics , labour economics , demographic economics , macroeconomics , geography , population , mathematical analysis , demography , mathematics , archaeology , aerospace engineering , sociology , engineering
This paper explores the forces that shaped China's interprovincial inequality in the last five decades of Communist rule. In so far as the change in interprovincial inequality is the result of differential growth in provincial GDP per capita and provincial economic growth, it may be decomposed into contributions by total factor productivity (TFP) and other factor inputs. A new method is introduced to make this decomposition. Care is exercised in taking into account problems of Chinese official data when implementing the decomposition analysis. The findings suggest that TFP and factor inputs exerted different and sometimes opposing effects on interprovincial inequality in the Maoist and reform era. The increase in inequality from the mid 1960s to the mid 1970s is due to the contribution of TFP overwhelming that of physical capital. The opposite is true for the 1980s. The increase in the 1990s is mainly driven by the skewed distribution of investments in favor of the richer coastal provinces reinforced by the increasing contribution of TFP.