是FDI导致中国经济“冰火两重天”?——基于省级面板数据的检验

FDI被认为是经济高速增长与居民消费严重不足"冰火两重天"式奇特现象的重要答案。本文使用1990～2009年中国省级面板数据进行的实证检验表明,FDI推动中国经济增长的同时也提高了居民人均消费支出,其影响的主要渠道可能是增加当地居民收入和地方政府社保支出份额。文章设想的FDI负向影响居民人均消费支出的社会保障支出份额效应虽然有迹象表明是存在的,但其效应被FDI增加地方政府社保支出份额效应所抵消。文章设想的FDI负向影响居民人均消费支出的收入不平等效应则被证实是不存在的。在此基础上本文得出结论,中国经济"冰火两重天"现象的原因可能需要从经济体系内部寻找,强势政府和要素市场扭曲可能才是根源,FDI流入一定程度上还修正了这种制度的缺陷。     

创新与收入不平等

文章运用1995-2014年中国省际面板数据,从部门内和部门间两个视角,考察总体创新和产业创新水平对收入不平等的影响。实证结果表明不同类型的创新活动对收入不平等产生了不同影响：对于城镇居民收入不平等,总体创新水平和高新技术创新水平具有显著的扩大作用,创新带来了不同收入阶层内部的分化;对于农村居民收入不平等,农业创新水平具有显著的缩小作用,显示出农业创新对农民增收的积极作用;对于城乡收入差距,总体创新水平和农业创新水平具有缩小作用,而高新技术产业创新水平具有显著扩大作用。不仅如此,由于城乡收入差距存在显著的正向空间自相关,总体创新和高新技术产业创新对相邻地区城乡收入差距有显著的扩大作用。     

The role of public pensions in income inequality among elderly households in China 1988–2013

Using data from the Chinese Household Income Project surveys for 1988, 1995, 2002 and 2013, we investigate the role of public pensions in income inequality among households with elderly members across two decades of pension policy reforms. We examine the distribution and role of public pensions at a national level and analyse the evolution of the contribution of public pensions to national income inequality across a much more extended time period than earlier studies, which have generally focused on regional changes over short periods. Our findings suggest that public pensions have become the most important source of income for households with elderly members on average in China, but the distribution of pension income is highly unequal, with a Gini coefficient of 0.74 in 2013. Public pension income has been the largest source of income inequality for elderly households since 2002 and contributed to more than half of total income inequality in the most recent year of the survey. This finding is robust against variations in the income inequality measures used. Additionally, our analysis suggests unequal distribution of pension benefits is the primary driver of pensioners' income inequality. Among several hypothetical policy changes, ensuring a minimum pension benefit for all existing pensioners seems to be the most fiscally effective option in reducing income inequality, with a 0.8% reduction in the Gini coefficient for a 1% increase in public pension expenditure.     

Education expansion,assortative marriage,and income inequality in China

In this paper, we study the pattern of assortative marriage in China since 1990 and its impact on income inequality. The results indicate that men in China are increasingly likely to marry women of similar education levels. We calculate the counterfactual income inequality that would prevail if marriages were randomly matched in terms of education. In 2005, China's overall Gini coefficient of household income per capita would decline from 0.512 to 0.476 if marriages were randomly matched. In urban areas, assortative marriage in education increased the Gini coefficients from 0.321 to 0.338 in 2009. The decomposition exercise shows that the rising returns to education contribute most to the increase in income inequality in urban areas between 1990 and 2009, while the change in marriage assortativeness plays a minor role.     

Introduction to income inequalities and redistribution in china

This special section presents the main findings about long-run trends in inequality in China and its driving factors as they emerge from a country case study carried out under a UNU-WIDER supported project.¹ Special focus in the umbrella project were on three issues: (i) the role of earnings inequality and its determinants; (ii) the role of top incomes when administrative records or other sources can be combined with household surveys; and (iii) the redistributive impact of public policies. Main findings of the project including those for China results were presented in a special panel during the UNU-WIDER Think Development – Think WIDER development conference held in Helsinki in September 2018.²

1. Motivation

Inequality has once again emerged as a major issue in economic development across the developed and developing world, and addressing this challenge is key in the UN Sustainable Development Agenda. The UNU-WIDER conference on Mapping the Future of Development Economics held in Helsinki in September 2016³ led to the formulation of a project to study inequality in five major developing countries accounting for more than 40 per cent of the world’s population. UNU-WIDER implemented these studies under its Inequality in the Giants project,⁴ designed as part of a broader international effort to shed light on a set of new questions on between-country and within-country inequalities, by generating integrated datasets and applying a consistent methodology to investigate the determinants of inequality dynamics in some of the world’s largest economies. China was included among the five case countries, and the effort included both a series of papers on China, produced under the coordination of Professor Shi Li and various workshops and meetings. Coming to grips with inequality in China is an obvious priority for anyone interested in trends in global inequality; and the present special section contains five key papers produced in the context of the UNU-WIDER project and subsequently accepted for publication by the China Economic Review.

2. Content of the special section

The five papers on inequality in China presented in this special section cover different topics and jointly illustrate a key set of important themes in the recent evolution of China’s income distribution.The opening study by Luo, Li, and Sicular (LLS) provides an overview and analysis of the long-term evolution of inequality in China, while the next three papers — on urban wage inequality, public transfers, and top incomes — each illustrates and delves more deeply into important aspects of the broader trends in inequality.What are the main findings of these papers? The core finding is that inequality in China rose markedly from the 1980s through the early 2000s; only since 2008 has the upward trend stopped or reversed. LLS report and examine the underpinnings of this core finding, using the five waves of the China Household Income Project surveys conducted during 1988-2013. This paper also finds a considerable, ongoing reduction in rural poverty, and a poverty decomposition analysis indicates that this poverty reduction was mostly due to income growth rather than redistribution in rural areas.The second paper by Gustafsson and Wan (GW) is on urban wage inequality from 1988 to 2013 and it sheds further light on the changes in the distribution of wage earnings. The authors highlight that average wages have grown rapidly and that wage inequality increased until 2007. Moreover, age has become weaker and education stronger related with wage. Importantly, the gender wage gap once small widened rapidly between 1995 and 2007, and workers in foreign owned firm and the state sector enjoy a wage premium.While wages are the most important component of income, it is only part of the inequality story. One important additional question is the role of government taxes and transfers. Since the early 2000s, China has embarked on a major effort to put in place a universal social safety net. The study by Cai and Yue (CY), which is the third paper, assess the consequences of these efforts. Their key conclusions include that the same public policy may produce different redistributive implications. Moreover, if the government keeps increasing the social security transfer scale without changing its distribution, then inequality will increase in China. In addition, formal-sector pension takes up the biggest share and is the most un-equalizing sub-item of all social security transfers; and related to the first paper in the special section they argue that the government should spend more on Dibao and rural residents pension to reduce inequality.Arguably, income inequality measured using household survey data understates actual inequality because surveys have difficulty in capturing top incomes. In the Chinese case, concerns about such bias have increased in the past ten years due to the expansion of private wealth and growing numbers of super-rich. The fourth paper by Li, Li, and Wan (LLW) is on top incomes in China and it attempts to correct for this bias using income information for the Chinese super-rich from various sources. They conclude that the Gini coefficient of income inequality increases substantially when samples of top incomes are incorporated.Finally, Gradín and Wu (GW) analyse in the fifth and final study the distribution of income and expenditure in China in a telling comparative perspective with India. Both countries represent two extreme cases in the relationship of inequality using both wellbeing indicators. It emerges that the joint distribution of income and expenditure differs between China and India because there is a higher prevalence of people with a large mismatch between their ranks in income and consumption in India, especially in rural areas, and particularly amongst those reporting low income and high expenditure. The main compositional effects identified are the different demographic and geographical composition of the countries’ populations, mostly the smaller households (especially in rural areas) and the higher level of urbanization in China than in India. The lack of consistency of cross-country comparisons based on income or expenditure calls for the use of hybrid inequality measures combining data on both provided they are available in the same survey.

3. Concluding remarks

The studies brought together in this special section provide telling insights about the trends in inequality in China from which scholars and policy makers can learn a great deal. In a global perspective, further increases in China’s mean income and wealth, both now above the global means, will begin to raise global between-country inequality. This is important in and of itself. Moreover, while we cannot expect that all the world’s poorest countries will follow the same path as China considering that the initial conditions and the international context they face will be very different, the experiences from China do reinforce the observation that much can be done by policy to influence inequality outcomes. In particular, and as argued by Gradin, Leibbrandt, & Tarp, 2020 (forthcoming):“well-functioning labour markets that promote job-creation, decent pay and social inclusion, removing any legal or de facto discrimination based on gender, race, ethnicity or place of origin, providing equal access to human and physical capital, and empowering the most disadvantaged population groups, are a key driver of increased equality”.These insights also emerge clearly from the five China studies in this special section.     

The trend of the Gini coefficient of China (1978–2010)

ABSTRACT

This study proposes a new approach to analyse the effects of an overlap term on the calculation of the overall Gini coefficient and estimates China’s Gini ratios since the adoption of the economic reform and open-door policies. A decomposition of the Chinese Gini coefficient for 1978–2010 reveals that the key factor contributing to income inequalities is the income disparity between rural and urban inhabitants. We further investigate the features of this income inequality between rural and urban areas and employ statistical approaches to evaluate the effects of urbanisation and rural-to-urban average income on nationwide income inequality. The results show that accelerating the pace of urbanisation is mainly responsible for decreasing China’s income disparity. Drawing on these results, we conclude with suggestions for related policies.     

Income inequality and subjective wellbeing: Panel data evidence from China

Using four waves of longitudinal data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), we examine the effects of income inequality on subjective wellbeing (SWB). We take a dual approach in measuring income inequality, and thus, we examine the effects of inequality using province-level Gini coefficient as well as between-group inequality or identity-related inequality defined as the income gap between migrants without urban household registration identity (hukou) and urban residents. We find negative effects of both province-level income inequality and between-group income inequality on SWB, measured by life satisfaction. Our results also show that the effects of income inequality on SWB is stronger for rural hukou residents compared to urban hukou residents. These findings are robust to alternative ways of measuring SWB and income inequality. In addition, we find evidence suggesting that neighbourhood trust is an important channel through which income inequality operates to reduce SWB. We suggest policies that promote trust in communities with high inequality with a view of addressing the negative effects of inequality on SWB.     

Do the Chinese “Keep up with the Jones”?: Implications of peer effects,growing economic disparities and relative deprivation on health outcomes among older adults in China

What are the health effects of unequal economic growth? What are the health consequences of ‘keeping up with the Jones’? Many developed countries (e.g., US and Japan) have experienced significant income growth between 1950s and 2000s but population survey shows that on average the population is not growing more satisfied with life. Theories that attempt to respond to these findings hypothesize that as income grows, people may spend more on conspicuous consumption because they compare themselves with others in their peer groups and care about their position in socio-economic distributions relative to others. Indeed, public health studies have found a relationship between income inequality and adult health outcomes in developed countries. Specifically, there seems to be a correlation between social hierarchy and mortality, as well as a correlation between social hierarchy and morbidity.China is a prime study site due to its growing spatial inequalities in the past decade. Though China has been committed to economic reform, different regions and cities have encountered very disparate rates of development and growth. In this paper, we utilize a set of panel data collected in China (China Health and Nutrition Survey 1989–2004) to examine the effects of peer groups, relative deprivation, and income disparities on individual health outcomes such as the probability of high waist circumference, body mass index categories, probability of hypertension, nutritional intake as well as health behavior such as smoking. We use a combination of multi-level mixed effects modeling as well as factor analysis to examine these effects and find significant and differential effects of income quartiles, peer groups, relative deprivation, and Gini coefficient on health.     

Globalization and economic inequality in the short and long run: The case of South Korea 1975–1995

We analyse the determinants of the Gini coefficient for income and expenditure in South Korea between 1975 and 1995. In both cases, we do not find support for the Kuznets inverted-U hypothesis. From an economic globalization viewpoint, the opening of goods markets reduces income inequality in both the short run (the Gini coefficient for income) and the long run (the Gini coefficient for expenditure). On the other hand, the opening of capital markets increases income inequality in both the short and the long run, although the latter is not statistically significant. These results suggest that the effect of economic globalization on income inequality has two routes and two different speeds.     

The Role of ICT in Modulating the Effect of Education and Lifelong Learning on Income Inequality and Economic Growth in Africa

This study assesses the role of information and communication technologies (ICT) in modulating the impact of education and lifelong learning on income inequality and economic growth. It focuses on a sample of 48 African countries from 2004 to 2014. The empirical evidence is based on the generalized method of moments. The following findings are established. First, mobile phone and internet each interact with primary school education to decrease income inequality. Second, all ICT indicators interact with secondary school education to exert a negative impact on the Gini index. Third, fixed broadband distinctly interacts with primary school education and lifelong learning to have a positive effect on economic growth. Fourth, ICT indicators do not significantly influence inequality and economic growth through tertiary school education and lifelong learning. These main findings are further substantiated. Policy implications are discussed.     

我国税收政策影响初次分配的实证分析

近年来,在我国经济保持持续高速增长的同时,我国居民的收入分配不平等现象也在加剧。税收政策历来都是各国调节收入分配的重要政策杠杆。根据1994～2009年我国的基尼系数、税收收入占GDP比重的时间序列数据,所建立的多元线性回归模型表明,我国现行的以间接税为主体的税制结构,整体上拉大了不同阶层的收入差距。增值税、营业税等税种与基尼系数呈正相关,个人所得税、财产税等直接税也由于征收规模过小、征管存在漏洞等原因,没有充分发挥出直接税应有的收入调节作用。     

寒门难出贵子?——基于“家庭财富-教育投资-贫富差距”的实证研究

文章首次从教育选择的角度出发,探讨了人力资本投资与收入差距之间的关系,作者首先建立了教育回报的代际交迭模型,推断出富裕家庭教育回报率高这个事实会拉大社会的贫富差距。作者使用1992年至2009年的中国城镇住户调查数据对理论推论进行了论证,实证结果表明出身"寒门"的子女期望教育回报率更低,这拉大了与富裕家庭群体的收入差距,也是"寒门难出贵子"的原因。自2001年来,家庭因素带来的教育回报差异能够解释19.1%的城镇居民收入差距,引入工具变量的结果表明,真实的情况可能更加严重。作者进一步模拟了"新常态"下的贫富差距状况,结果表明,经济潜在增速下降会使得基尼系数扩大6.1%。     

Government spending and the distribution of economic growth

In the United States, total government spending, and especially government social spending, has increased greatly over the last 50 years. What effect this has had on economic growth is a subject of intense debate among politicians, policymakers, and economists. However, there has been less attention paid to the distributional effects of government spending even though economic inequality has grown greatly over the last generation and much social spending is at least indirectly intended to reduce inequality. The effects of government social spending in the United States on growth in family income at deciles of the income distribution were estimated. The results suggested that social spending but not non‐social spending was likely to increase growth in family income per capita measured over 10‐year intervals. The largest effects of social spending were for deciles below the median income. At no point in the distribution does social spending have a negative effect.     

INCOME INEQUALITY IN THE PHILIPPINES, 1961–91

Household income inequality in the Philippines remains high and the trends for three decades have been fairly stable except for a sharp decline in the mid-1980s. Gini coefficient of income inequality has been consistently close to 0.50. Urbanization and education of household head are the most important factors determining the level of income inequality while the contribution of age of head is limited. The increase in the number of urban households results in an increase of overall inequality while the increase in the number of household heads with a college education tends to decrease the inequality. Among the household income sources, wage income is the largest contributor to total income inequality. Wage rate inequality appears to be a major source of wage income inequality.     

收入差距、社会保障支出与农村居民幸福感

收入差距的日益恶化严重影响到了居民的幸福感,社会保障支出作为民生性支出,具有典型的福利性与公平性特征,其可能加剧或缓解收入差距对农村居民幸福感的影响。本文基于2010年中国社会综合调查数据（CGSS）,采用Ordered Probit模型,实证分析了收入差距、社会保障支出对农村居民幸福感的影响。研究发现,收入差距与农村居民幸福感呈倒“U”型关系,低水平的收入差距对农村居民幸福感有积极影响,而较高的收入差距则会降低农村居民幸福感,且这一效应对农村低收入者幸福感的影响更大;社会保障支出不仅对农村居民幸福感有显著的正向影响,而且缓解了收入差距过大对农村居民幸福感带来的不利冲击。在采用工具变量法矫正内生性后,结论依然稳健。因此,我国政府理应将收入差距控制在合理区间,同时加大社会保障支出,从而使农村居民更幸福感。     

Income inequality and happiness: Which inequalities matter in China?

The effect of inequality on happiness should intrigue social scientists. Of the many dimensions of income inequality, we explore four, analysing a rich data set for China. Does actual or perceived inequality have a greater effect on happiness? We find that perceptions of inequality are the more important. How broad is the reference group with which people compare themselves? They report that it is narrow; and indeed narrowly defined inequality has the greater effect on happiness. Do perceptions of the degree of fairness of inequality matter? They do, as they ameliorate the adverse effect of inequality on happiness, especially for the poorest. Is it self-centred or community-based inequality which affects happiness? Both measures have significant effects, but in opposite directions. The research and policy implications are discussed.     

The unreported income and its impact on Gini coefficient in China

ABSTRACT

Unreported income is an important factor that distorts China’s household income accounting and Gini coefficient calculation. On the basis of comparing NBS household survey data and data from China’s Cash Flow Statement, this paper estimates the size and structure of unreported income in China over recent years. Our study found that about 20% of household disposable income has not been covered by existing household surveys in recent years. In 2015, the omission rate was 19.5%. Operating income and property income have the highest omission rates. Considering that unreported income is primarily owned by high-income people, China’s falling Gini coefficient since 2009 may have resulted from the statistical omission of partial incomes of high-income group. If unreported income is re-included, China’s Gini coefficient would increase by 10 percentage points rather than decrease.     

Does the "missing" high-income matter? -Income distribution and inequality revisited with truncated distribution

The issue of missing high-income data in household surveys has been a constant concern among researchers and practitioners when drawing inferences on inequality measures, discussing the relationship between poverty and growth, and examining the relationship between expenditure and income. We introduce a truncated distribution technique to correct the potential bias caused by the missing high-income data. Using 2002/2007/2013 Chinese Household Income Project Survey data and the 2002/2007/2014 US Consumer Expenditure Survey data, we test and estimate three commonly used income distributions: lognormal, Singh Maddala, and Beta II distribution with/without the truncation assumption. We find that the truncated Beta II distribution best describes income distribution in China, while the truncated Singh Maddala best fits the income in the US. The missing high-income in China has a significant but small effect on the Gini and Theil coefficients for 2007, whereas the missing high-income in the US has significant effects for 2007 and 2014. The Gini coefficient increases from the sample mean 0.44 to the simulation mean of truncated Beta II distribution as 0.47 for China in 2007 and increases from the sample mean 0.4422/0.4485 to the simulated mean of truncated Singh Maddala distribution 0.4506/0.4588 for 2007 and 2014 respectively. We also check the impact of missing low-income individuals on inequality assessment and find that the missing low-income data does not appear to underestimate inequality.     

Informal employment and its effect on the income distribution in urban China

This paper discusses the issue of informal employment and its effect on the income distribution in China using datasets from the China Urban Labour Surveys of 2005 and 2010. Based on a new definition of informal employment, we estimated the proportion of informal employment relative to total non-agricultural employment in urban China and found it to be 49.7% in 2005 and 40.3% in 2010. Meanwhile, our study illustrated that informal employees' earnings were 67% that of formal employees, and this large earnings gap raised the Gini coefficient to 0.42 in 2005. The Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition result shows that the earnings gap explains more than half of the overall personal income inequality in urban China. These results indicate that informal employment has a significant effect on the income distribution in urban China. Consequently, regulating the labour market, eliminating job discriminations and legislating the informal employment should be considered as alternative means of reducing inequality in China.     

The contribution of income components to income inequality in the rural former homelands of South Africa: a decomposable Gini analysis

Households in developing countries adopt livelihood strategiesthat often rely on income from a diversity of sources. Froma policy perspective it becomes important to understand therelative importance of income sources in driving inter-householdinequality and poverty. Recent theoretical advances allow forthe decomposition of the Gini coefficient by income componentsand for an assessment of the impact of changes in income componentson the Gini coefficient. This paper applies such a techniqueto South African data for the rural former 'homeland' areas.In doing so, the paper extends existing knowledge of South Africanincome inequality. Particular attention is paid to integratingthe decomposition work into debates about rural developmentpolicy in South Africa.