Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/63595 
Year of Publication: 
2006
Series/Report no.: 
WIDER Research Paper No. 2006/152
Publisher: 
The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), Helsinki
Abstract: 
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.
Subjects: 
poverty
Shapley decomposition
unit-record data
China
JEL: 
O15
O53
ISBN: 
929190936X=978-92-9190-936-0
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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