Which Regional Inequality? the Evoltion of Rural-urban and Inland-coastal Inequality in China, 1983-1995

It is the Policy of Cornell University actively to support equality of educational and employment opportunity. No person shall be denied admission to any educational program or activity or be denied employment on the basis of any legally prohibited discrimination involving, but not limited to, such factors as race, color. creed. religion, national or ethnic origin. sex, age or handicap. The University is committed to the maintenance of affirmative action programs which will assure the continuation of such equality of opportunity. ABSlRACT This paper develops a unified empirical framework for describing the relative contribution of rural-urban and inland-coastal inequality to overall regional inequality in China during the 1980s and 1990s. The framework (i) assesses rural-urban and inland­ coastal inequalities from the same dataset, (ii) presents results for a sufficiently long time period to transcend short term fluctuations, (iii) allows for differential price changes and (iv) applies a consistent notion of "contribution to inequality" through decomposition analysis. The paper highlights an interesting contrast While the contribution of rural­ urban inequality is much higher than that of inland-coastal inequality in terms of levels, the trend is very different-the rural-urban contribution has not changed very much, if anything it has decreased a little, but the inland-coastal contribution has increased several fold. The paper ends by speculating on the possible reasons for this empirical observation.