1st Edition
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.
Title: Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty in Urban China
Editor
LI, Shi
Professor, Institute of Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), Beijing
&
SATO, Hiroshi
Professor, Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo
Contents
Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Foreword
Acknowledgements
List of contributors
Chapter 1. Introduction
Li Shi and Hiroshi Sato
Part I. Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty
Chapter 2. Labor Retrenchment in China: Determinants and Consequences
Simon Appleton, John Knight, Lina Song and Qingjie Xia
Chapter 3. Unemployment, Poverty and Income Disparity in Urban China
Jinjun Xue and Wei Zhong
Chapter 4. Economic Restructuring and Income Inequality in Urban China
Xin Meng
Chapter 5. Unemployment, Consumption Smoothing, and Precautionary Saving in Urban China
Xin Meng
Chapter 6. The Decline of In-kind Wage Payments in Urban China
Li Shi and Zhao Yaohui
Chapter 7. Rising Poverty and Its Causes in Urban China
Li Shi
Chapter 8. Can a Subjective Poverty Line be Applied to Urban China?
Bjorn Gustafsson, Li Shi, and Hiroshi Sato
Part II. The Emerging Labour Market
Chapter 9. From "Work Unit Socialism" to a Stratified Labour Market
Hiroshi Sato
Chapter 10. Contrasting paradigms: Segmentation and Competitiveness in the Formation of the Chinese Labour Market
Simon Appleton, John Knight, Lina Song and Qingjie Xia
Chapter 11. Job Mobility of Residents and Migrants in Urban China
John Knight and Linda Yueh
Chapter 12. How Does Firm Profitability Affect Wages in Urban China?
John Knight and Li Shi
Chapter 13. An Investment Model of Social Capital with Empirical Application to Women’s Labour Market Outcomes in Urban China
Linda Yueh
Index
Biography
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 Göteborg 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).
'Based on a series of large-scale household surveys in a number of Chinese cities, this volume provides timely and informative studies on the issues of unemployment, inequality, poverty and their interrelationships... a collection of good quality empirical studies... this volume presents a rich and detailed profile of the urban poor in China.' - Shenjing He, China Information, vol. XXI, no. 3, 2007
'This book broadens our understanding of the functioning of the Chinese urban labour market and new urban poverty in China. Scholars and policy makers will certainly appreciate the authors' hard work' - Mark Wang, University of Melbourne, IDPR, 2009
