Regional inequality in China appears to be persistent and even growing in the past two decades. We study potential offsetting factors and interprovincial migration to shed light on the sources of this persistence. We find that some of the inequality could be attributed to differences in quality of labor, industry composition, and geographical location of provinces. We also demonstrate that interprovincial migration, while driven in part by wage differences across provinces, does not offset these differences. Finally, we find that interprovincial redistribution did not help offset regional inequality during our sample period.
Article Citation
Candelaria, Christopher, Galina Hale, and Mary C. Daly. 2009. “Beyond Kuznets: Persistent Regional Inequality in China,” Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Working Paper 2009-07. Available at https://doi.org/10.24148/wp2009-07