Since the turn of the millennium, China has become the fastest growing economy in the world. This growth resulted in significant improvements in real living standards and reduction in poverty rates. The World Bank estimates that more than 60% of the population lived below the poverty line of $1 per day (PPP) at the start of the economic reforms. By 2004, poverty had fallen to 10 percent, [1] suggesting that approximately 500 million people had been lifted out of poverty in one generation. At the same time, the pace of change has brought mixed results. China faces serious natural resource shortages and environmental problems. As people live in different areas, the differences between types grow. [2]
In the past decade or so, China's Gini coefficient [3] has generally been fluctuating and declining. After reaching its highest point of 0.491 in 2008, the Gini coefficient of the national per capita disposable income has shown a fluctuating downward trend since 2009. It dropped to 0.468 in 2020, with a cumulative decrease of 0.023. At the same time, the adjustment of residents' income distribution is increasing. During the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" period, the average annual net transfer income per capita of residents across the country increased by 10.1%, faster than the growth of overall residents' income. [4]
China's economy has shifted from high-speed growth to medium-to-high-speed growth. economic development has always been in a state of relative agglomeration, and the economic development pattern shows the evolutionary characteristics of "balanced-unbalanced-gradual equilibrium". Economic development shows an obvious overall trend of advancing from coastal to inland areas. and China's economy is developing in a balanced way from cities to rural areas [5]
Inequality in China can be largely attributed to collective factors, which means that many of the current inequalities in China are not at the individual level, but at the collective level. Traditional political ideology promotes merit-based inequality. Official propaganda emphasizes that economic development requires some people to get rich first, and the resulting inequality is the price this society pays for development. [6]
China's traditional political consciousness promotes inequality based on performance. In real life, people in leadership positions are often given more privileges and conveniences. If privileges are given to the upper class, it will benefit their subordinates or other people in society. So this kind of inequality is recognized and encouraged in China's traditional ideological system. [7] This inequality makes China's economy unequal. [6]
China is one of the countries with the largest income gap between urban and rural households. The urban-rural income gap increased as a proportion of total income inequality10 between 1995 and 2007, rising from 38% to 48%. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China, as of 2021, the gap in per capita disposable income between urban and rural residents in China is 2.57 times, and the income level of urban residents is significantly higher than that of rural residents. The economic development and industrial structure of urban areas are more modern, while the development of rural areas is relatively backward and the industrial structure is relatively single. This is one of the reasons why the gap between urban and rural areas is gradually widening. [8]
The average income growth level of high-income groups is significantly faster than that of low-income groups. The income of the richest segment of society is 25 times that of the poorest segment. In addition, data on high-income households have not been fully released, and many gray incomes (including bribery and corruption) have not been calculated.[ citation needed ]
According to estimates by Sato et al. (2011), housing accounts for nearly 60% of household wealth, and two-thirds of wealth inequality comes from the gap in housing wealth. Housing wealth per urban household was 4.5 times that of rural households in 2002, and by 2007 it had increased to 7.2 times. This gap is wider than the urban-rural income gap. [9]
Although personal income is always positively related to life satisfaction, the effect is weaker in wealthy areas than in poor areas. As Brockman et al. et al. (2009) argue that the rapid increase in income inequality in China may produce a group of “frustrated achievers” whose incomes are on a downward trend despite significant increases in their incomes, judging from big data, leading to life satisfaction degree dropped. Even highly educated city dwellers can largely be seen as economic winners. In 2008, China's income inequality increased again, and people began to express their dissatisfaction with society, which manifested itself in threats, strikes, civil unrest, and criminal behavior. [10]
Economic inequality is an umbrella term for a) income inequality or distribution of income, b) wealth inequality or distribution of wealth, and c) consumption inequality. Each of these can be measured between two or more nations, within a single nation, or between and within sub-populations.
In economics, income distribution covers how a country's total GDP is distributed amongst its population. Economic theory and economic policy have long seen income and its distribution as a central concern. Unequal distribution of income causes economic inequality which is a concern in almost all countries around the world.
The distribution of wealth is a comparison of the wealth of various members or groups in a society. It shows one aspect of economic inequality or economic heterogeneity.
Social issues in China are wide-ranging, and are a combined result of Chinese economic reforms set in place in the late 1970s, the nation's political and cultural history, and an immense population. Due to the significant number of social problems that have existed throughout the country, China's government has faced difficulty in trying to remedy the issues. Many of these issues are exposed by the Chinese media, while subjects that may contain politically sensitive issues may be censored. Some academics hold that China's fragile social balance, combined with a bubble economy makes China a very unstable country, while others argue China's societal trends have created a balance to sustain itself.
Poverty in India remains a major challenge despite overall reductions in the last several decades as its economy grows. According to an International Monetary Fund paper, extreme poverty, defined by the World Bank as living on US$1.9 or less in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms, in India was as low as 0.8% in 2019, and the country managed to keep it at that level in 2020 despite the unprecedented COVID-19 outbreak. According to the World Bank, India experienced a significant decline in the prevalence of extreme poverty from 22.5% in 2011 to 10.2% in 2019. A working paper of the bank said rural poverty declined from 26.3% in 2011 to 11.6% in 2019. The decline in urban areas was from 14.2% to 6.3% in the same period. The poverty level in rural and urban areas went down by 14.7 and 7.9 percentage points, respectively. According to United Nations Development Programme administrator Achim Steiner, India lifted 271 million people out of extreme poverty in a 10-year time period from 2005–2006 to 2015–2016. A 2020 study from the World Economic Forum found "Some 220 million Indians sustained on an expenditure level of less than Rs 32 / day—the poverty line for rural India—by the last headcount of the poor in India in 2013."
Urbanization in China increased in speed following the initiation of the reform and opening policy. By the end of 2023, China had an urbanization rate of 66.2% and is expected to reach 75-80% by 2035.
Income in India discusses the financial state in India. With rising economic growth and India's income is also rising rapidly. As an overview, India's per capita net national income or NNI was around Rs. 98,374 in 2022-23. The per-capita income is a crude indicator of the prosperity of a country. In contrast, the gross national income at constant prices stood at over 128 trillion rupees. According to a 2021 report by the Pew Research Center, India has roughly 1.2 billion lower-income individuals, 66 million middle-income individuals, 16 million upper-middle-income individuals, and barely 2 million in the high-income group. According to The Economist, 78 million of India's population are considered middle class as of 2017, if defined using the cutoff of those making more than $10 per day, a standard used by the India's National Council of Applied Economic Research. According to the World Bank, 93% of India's population lived on less than $10 per day, and 99% lived on less than $20 per day in 2021.
Historically, the Chinese economy was characterized by widespread poverty, extreme income inequalities, and endemic insecurity of livelihood. Improvements since then saw the average national life expectancy rise from around forty-four years in 1949 to sixty-eight years in 1985, while the Chinese population estimated to be living in absolute poverty fell from between 200 and 590 million in 1978 to 70 million in 2017. Before the 19th century, China was one of the leading global powers.
In China, poverty mainly refers to rural poverty. Decades of economic development has reduced urban extreme poverty. According to the World Bank, more than 850 million Chinese people have been lifted out of extreme poverty; China's poverty rate fell from 88 percent in 1981 to 0.7 percent in 2015, as measured by the percentage of people living on the equivalent of US$1.90 or less per day in 2011 purchasing price parity terms, which still stands in 2022.
Income inequality in the Philippines is the extent to which income, most commonly measured by household or individual, is distributed in an uneven manner in the Philippines.
Nigeria had one of the world's highest economic growth rates, averaging 7.4% according to the Nigeria economic report that was released in July 2019 by the World Bank. Following the oil price collapse in 2014–2016, combined with negative production shocks, the gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate dropped to 2.7% in 2015. In 2016 during its first recession in 25 years, the economy contracted by 1.6%. Nationally, 43 percent of Nigerians live below the poverty line, while another 25 percent are vulnerable. For a country with massive wealth and a huge population to support commerce, a well-developed economy, and plenty of natural resources such as oil, the level of poverty remains unacceptable. However, poverty may have been overestimated due to the lack of information on the extremely huge informal sector of the economy, estimated at around 60% more, of the current GDP figures. As of 2018, the population growth rate is higher than the economic growth rate, leading to a slow rise in poverty. According to a 2018 report by the World Bank, almost half the population is living below the international poverty line, and unemployment peaked at 23.1%.
China's current mainly market economy features a high degree of income inequality. According to the Asian Development Bank Institute, "before China implemented reform and opening-up policies in 1978, its income distribution pattern was characterized as egalitarian in all aspects."
Brazil has high income inequality despite high rates of economic growth. The country's richest 1% of the population have 13% of all household income, a similar economic result to that of the poorest 50%. This inequality results in poverty levels that are inconsistent with an economy the size of that of Brazil. The country's GDP growth in 2010 was 7.5%. In recent decades, there has been a modest decline in inequality for the country as a whole. Brazil's GINI coefficient, a measure of income inequality, has slowly decreased from 0.596 in 2001 to 0.543 in 2009. However, the numbers still point to a rather significant problem of income disparity.
Income inequality in India refers to the unequal distribution of wealth and income among its citizens. According to the CIA World Factbook, the Gini coefficient of India, which is a measure of income distribution inequality, was 35.2 in 2011, ranking 95th out of 157. Wealth distribution is also uneven, with one report estimating that 54% of the country's wealth is controlled by millionaires, the second highest after Russia, as of November 2016. The richest 1% of Indians own 58% of wealth, while the richest 10% of Indians own 80% of the wealth. This trend has consistently increased, meaning the rich are getting richer much faster than the poor, widening the income gap. Inequality worsened since the establishment of income tax in 1922, overtaking the British Raj's record of the share of the top 1% in national income, which was 20.7% in 1939–40.
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The 2014 National People's Congress held its annual meeting in March 2014 at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China. The session opened on 5 March and concluded on 13 March.
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