"This work provides a new, comprehensive, and empirically grounded study of household incomes in China that critically examines the long-term rise and recent apparent decline in inequality. It covers incomes and inequality nationwide as well as separately in the urban and rural sectors, with...

Harmonised microdata show a Gini coefficient for per capita total income of 45.3 percent in China 2002 and 33.6 percent in Russia 2003. A much larger urban to rural income gap in combination with a much smaller proportion of people living in urban areas in China are important reasons for this...