MCLC: survey shows wide income gap

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: survey shows wide income gap
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (7/19/13):
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/20/world/asia/survey-in-china-shows-wide-inc
ome-gap.html

Survey in China Shows Wide Income Gap
By EDWARD WONG

BEIJING — Results of a wide-ranging survey of Chinese family wealth and
living habits released this week by Peking University showed a wide gap in
income between the nation’s top earners and those at the bottom, and a
vast difference between earners in top-tier coastal cities and those in
interior provinces.

The survey found that in 2012, the households in the top 5 percent income
bracket earned 23 percent of the nation’s total household income. The
households in the lowest 5 percent accounted for just .1 percent of total
income.

Average annual income for a family in 2012 was 13,000 renminbi, or about
$2,100. When broken down by geography, the survey results showed that the
average amount in Shanghai was just over 29,000 renminbi, or $4,700, while
the average in Gansu Province, in northwest China, was just 11,400
renminbi, or just under $2,000. Average family income in urban areas was
about 16,500 renminbi, or $2,600, while it was 10,000 renminbi, or $1,600,
in rural areas.

The survey results underscore some of the economic challenges confronting
the Communist Party as a result of the growth policies that party leaders
had pushed over the decades. The policies have lifted millions from
poverty, but have resulted in an uneven distribution of wealth, which was
one of the glaring problems of early 20th-century China and contributed to
the success of the Communist revolution. Ordinary Chinese are increasingly
resentful of wealth being accumulated by a select few — and in particular
by people connected to party officials — and government censors often try
to limit discussion in public venues of the personal wealth of the richest
Chinese and of the families of China’s leaders.

The survey was conducted by the Chinese Family Panel Studies, a research
program based at a social science institute of Peking University, one of
China’s leading universities. According to Chinese news reports and a news
release put out by the program, the survey’s findings were based on 73,000
hours of interviews with 14,960 households in five province-level areas,
and on 57,155 people filling out questionnaires.

The survey gave a wide range for the unemployment rate in China: anywhere
from 4.4 percent to 9.2 percent. It estimated China’s Gini coefficient to
be .49 in 2012, less than the .51 in 2010. The Gini coefficient is an
approximate measure of the scale of the wealth gap in a society, and the
Chinese government avoided releasing an official number for several years.
Then in January 2013, the head of the National Bureau of Statistics, Ma
Jiantang, said the Gini coefficient was .474 in 2012, down from a peak of
.491 in 2008.

In March 2012, Bo Xilai, a top party official who was trying to create a
populist image for himself and was later purged, said at a news conference
that the Gini coefficient had reached an alarming .46. His willingness to
announce the number came as a surprise to many observers.

The survey showed that more than 87 percent of Chinese families owned or
partially owned property in 2012, and more than one-tenth of Chinese
families have more than one property. The Chinese government has recently
enacted policies to try to discourage the purchases of second properties
for speculation, to try to slow down the sharp rise of real estate prices
in urban areas. The average size of property for a Chinese family was 100
square meters, the survey said.

The survey also found a drastic change in the cohabitation rate of couples
before marriage: It was 1.8 percent in 1970, in the middle of the Cultural
Revolution, but had risen to 32.6 percent by 2000.

The survey was not available online, but its main results were released on
Wednesday in a news release on the institute’s Web site. The numbers did
not draw wide attention, but some Chinese commented on the results on
microblogs. One person wrote: “One millionaire for every nine paupers.”
Patrick Zuo contributed research.