By using the five waves of the China Household Income Project surveys conducted during 1988-2013, this paper investigates long-term changes in income inequality and poverty in China. Income inequality rose before 2007 and then fell by a small amount. The main reason for the rise in income...

A new method is proposed to decompose inequality changes as measured by the Gini index1 into structural effects, real inequality effects and interactive effects. Application the method to updated Chinese data reveals that structural effects represent the driving force underlying the increasing...