XClose

Institute of Epidemiology & Health Care

Home
Menu

The Dynamics of Income Inequality: The Case of China in a Comparative Perspective

20 March 2018, 2:00 pm–3:00 pm

Event Information

Open to

All

Location

Institute of Education - 20 Bedford Way, Room 746

Tak Wing will compare household income panel data from China, Germany, the UK, and the US. Consistent with previous research, he will show that income is more unequally distributed in China than in the three Western countries. But China also has a higher level of income mobility. Because mobility has an income equalising effect, the snapshot measures of inequality overstate the true level of inequality in China to a greater degree than they do for the other countries. But even after we have taken into account the impact of mobility, permanent income is more unequally distributed in China than in the US, the UK, and Germany. Moreover, in the three Western countries, the lion's share of income inequality is between individuals rather than within individual. The opposite holds for China. In light of his findings, he will discuss how far the sharp rise of income inequality in China can be explained by the Kuznets' inverted-U shaped curve.

Biography

Tak Wing Chan is a Professor of Quantitative Social Science at UCL Institute of Education.  His main research interests are social stratification and mobility, family and the life course, and sociology of culture.