A Study On The Spatial And Temporal Relationship Between Urban Income Inequality And Poverty In Xi'an During The Transitional Period

Entering 90’s of 20 century, China’s income inequality crosses the line. Urban poverty problems began to appear and draw public attention. Through the analysis of the existing literature, this paper finds that there are many drawbacks of the existing results in the aspect of content, region, angle and depth. Based on this, this research takes the relationship between income inequality and poverty as the focus and carries on the measure of income inequality and poverty change of the city of Xi’an in its transition period from the perspective of overall and individual. This paper describes Xi ’an urban residents’ income inequality and poverty status in details. Besides, it describes spatial characteristics of the above two factors and mines spatial characteristics of the income inequality and poverty status, leading to an analysis of the interaction process of income inequality and poverty. At last, this paper adopts decomposition methods to quantitative analyses the influence of various factors and action mechanism between different elements and income inequality and poverty status. The research hopes that it can make up the shortage of the urban internal income inequality and poverty evolution studies. Thereby it hopes to provide a more scientific and comprehensive presentation of the income inequality and poverty’s conditions, spatial mechanisms and action mechanism in city’s transition, to provide decision-making reference for Xi’an and other areas similar studies of the poverty reduction strategy and urbanization strategy, etc.Major results of the research include:(1) the state of income inequality of Xi’an has greatly improved in 1990-2013, but the income gap is still large. Poor conditions of Xi’an have improved as a whole, but the improvement of poor depth and strength is not as obvious as the decrease of poverty rate. The poverty line has great influence on poverty measurement, poverty index, and inequality index and poverty decomposition. The improvement of poverty comes out largely from the relief of income inequality conditions. With the poverty line rising, the role of economic growth on poverty reduction is not reflected. Especially in 2000-2013, economic growth does not reduce the effects of poverty.(2) In 1990 to 2013, Xi’an north and south income gap was widening. High-income areas concentrated in the south. Regional development conditions and urbanization process have great influence on income and inequality. The key development area of the city becomes income growth poles and drives revenue growth of around areas. As a result, income inequality and poverty status have improved. The improvement of poverty and inequality of relatively slow development areas was not ideal relatively. The floating population agglomeration region’s income conditions changed fiercely. The old industrial area becomes low concentrated areas. Areas’ relative income increase and the improvement in income inequality conditions have convergence. The city’s non-key development area and limited development area are at a disadvantage no matter in relative income increase and improvement of income inequality. The distribution of relative income increase area and higher income inequality improving area has a similar trend. It is mainly distributed in the south key development area and around walls. The direction of cities’ development will determine the spatial distribution characteristics of income and inequality changes.(3) Income distribution and relative income changes have a bias on the influence of poverty changes. Improvement of income distribution has significant effects on poverty relief. Relative income increase has greater effects on preventing coming back to poverty. The poverty changes of steady development areas are relatively gentle. This also enlightens policy makers that it should maintain a relatively stable economic development and synchronize economic growth and income inequality.(4) There are many influence factors of income inequality and poverty. In the population characteristics, education degree, working or not, job types and sex have the most significant influence on income inequality and poverty. Female, low education degree and non-working properties are easier to become poor. The evolution mechanism of income inequality and poverty is the joint action of multiple factors. Economical transition, update of cities, transform of social systems, migration of population and targeted policies have a far-reaching influence on the inter-temporal change of inequality and poverty.