Poverty reduction in China: Trends and causes

Arbeitspapier

Applying the Shapley decomposition to unit-record household survey data, this paper investigates the trends and causes of poverty in China in the 1990s. The changes in poverty trends are attributed to two proximate causes; income growth and shifts in relative income distribution. The Foster-Greer-Thorbecke measures are computed and decomposed, with different datasets and alternative assumptions about poverty lines and equivalence. Among the robust results are: (i) both income growth and favourable distributional changes can explain China’s remarkable achievement in combating poverty in rural areas in the first half of the 1990s; (2) in the second half of the 1990s, both rural and urban China suffered from rapidly rising inequality and stagnant income growth, leading to a slow-down in poverty reduction, even reversal of poverty trend.

Object Details

• ISBN: 929190936X=978-92-9190-936-0
• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: WIDER Research Paper ; No. 2006/152

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration ; Economywide Country Studies: Asia including Middle East
• Subject: poverty ; Shapley decomposition ; unit-record data ; China ; Armut ; Dekompositionsverfahren ; China

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Zhang, Yin ; Wan, Guanghua
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER)
• (where): Helsinki
• (when): 2006

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/63595
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET