Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty in Urban China

Although the Chinese economy is growing at a very high rate, there are massive social dislocations arising as a result of economic restructuring. Though the scale of the problem is huge, very few studies have examined the changes in income inequality in the late 1990s due to a lack of data on household incomes.

Based on extensive original research, this book redresses this imbalance, examining the issue of unemployment and the problems it has brought for the people of China. Investigating the market outcomes in post-reform urban China, the book focuses on the relationships between unemployment, inequality, and poverty. In addition, the authors provide an analysis on the emerging urban labour market and its stratified structure, job mobility, profit sharing, and the role of social capital. Empirical analysis is supported by rich data from nationally representative urban household and rural migrant surveys, providing the latest picture of the widening inequality in Chinese urban society.

LI Shi is Professor of Economics at the School of Economics and Business, Beijing Normal University. He has done research as a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford and Goteborg University, has taught as a professor at Hitotsubashi University and is the co-editor of China’s Retreat from Equality (M. E. Sharpe, 2001).

Hiroshi SATO is Professor of Chinese Economy and Society at the Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo. He is the author of The Growth of Market Relations in Post-Reform Rural China (Routledge, 2003).