Multidimensional Inequality Measures In China

According to China Human Development Report in 2016 released by the United Nations Development Program(UNDP),since the reform and opening-up,China's economy has kept a rapid growth and the number of poor people has decreased significantly.Besides,China has become the second largest economy in the world.China's human development index ranked 90th out of 188 countries in 2014,and China has entered the high-level human development group of countries,mainly due to China's rapid economic growth and progress in social policy.However,with the China's economy dramatically developing,the imbalance between social and economic development can be found in the same period.The uncoordinated development did not improve the quality of life of residents as it should be in the context of rapid economic development.Apart from that,The development gap between urban and rural areas,different regions and different groups gradually increases.In reality,contradiction which is caused by the inequality problem is almost everywhere.This paper analyzes inequality problem in the frame of the multidimensional nature of welfare,which is not only reflected in the widening gap in economic factors such as income,but also in non-economic factors(eg health,education,services,etc.).To truly reflect the level of social welfare,people must comprehensively consider the economic factors and non-economic factors of multidimensional inequality.However,there are still few studies on multidimensional inequality of welfare in China,and there are still some shortcomings in the existing research.This paper attempts to collect the multidimensional variables that affect the welfare and analyse multidimensional inequality in China,aiming at providing more comprehensive and more innovative perspectives to reveal inequity problem in China.Also,it can help provide a rich empirical basis of making relevant policy.First of all,this article defines basic theories involved in the study,and overviews the welfare and equality theory by reading references,which lays the theoretical foundation for the further research.Secondly,this paper combs the existing research methods and application of methods related with inequality problem in both domestic and foreign countries from the theoretical and empirical aspects,and finally identifies the issues to be studied and solved in this paper:1,make a collection of multdimensional attributes as comprehensive as possible to describe welfare level and inequality degree of China;2,make static and dynamic analysis of inequality based on the level of welfare to identify the deadly factors leading to inequality and welfare changes.Then,this paper compares and analyzes the similarities and differences between the method of measurement of income inequality and that of multidimensional inequality.Following,it evaluates the merits and demerits of different measuring methods.Finally,based on the purpose of this study,this paper determines the measuring method of multidimensional inequality--Tsui index which is suitable for this paper.Based on the introduction of Tsui index,the analysis process of Tsui index is introduced in detail as well.Finally,with the consideration of correlation in different dimensions,based on the micro-datas from 1991 to 2011 in CHNS database,this paper analyses the multidimensional inequality in China empirically,and compares and analyses the measuring result of single-dimension Gini coefficient with that of multidimensional Tsui index.Meanwhile,based on the decomposition of Tsui index,this paper make an analysis of relative multidimensional welfare level from static and dynamic aspects.Also,it studies the contribution that each dimension and the correlation between dimensions make to the situation of inequality and welfare changes.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1)Although there are relationships among some non-economic factors such as income,education,health and nutrition which have an effect on people's welfare,these factors can not completely determine the distribution of all non-economic factors.Any inequality of single dimension can not fully reflect the inequality of the residents'welfare.(2)In the period from 1991 to 2011,the inequality degree of the whole society increased,and the Gini coefficient of income was the largest and had an upward trend.Morever,the education inequality had a downward trend following the income inequality,and the inequality of health and nutrition were relatively stable.(3)In terms of static decomposition,income inequality contributes the most to the relative welfare level,followed by education and nutrition which contributes more to welfare than health.In addition,the rate of contribution that the correlation among the four dimensions makes to the welfare inequality is gradually expanding,and the impact is more and more significant.(4)From the perspective of dynamic decomposition,the change of income inequality is still the main factor affecting the change of social welfare.The contribution of nutrition change should not be overlooked and it is the most important factor which influences the change of social welfare in 1993-1997 and 2009-2011.Based on the above conclusions,this paper gives reasonable policy recommendations to improve the level of social welfare and alleviate the inequality.