The Political Economy of Chinese Development by Mark Selden

Author:Mark Selden [Selden, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Ethnic Studies, General, Regional Studies, Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 9781317455479
Google: ldYYDQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-09-16T05:12:42+00:00

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the data strongly underline the cyclical pattern of income differentiation within the village in which neither sector (state or collective) nor occupation (agriculture, sideline industry, factory, cadre, or administrator) substantially affects household and per capita household income.

Table 5.1 shows that in this affluent team, extracollective sources of income have tended to moderate rather than exacerbate income inequality. It appears, then, that in Wugong households do trade collective for off-farm and private income, and that the overall effect of these alternate sources of income is either neutral or slightly equalizing in its consequences.

Many of these patterns, with respect to the demographic cycle and the equalizing effects of extracollective incomes, are not restricted to this one rich team in a model village. Data on an average-income team in Guangdong province show a comparable distribution. With an average per capita collective income of 71.6 yuan in 1978, team 12, Xin tang brigade, Tangtang commune, was just below the national average of 74 yuan in that year (Griffin and Saith 1982: 175-79; Vermeer 1982: 20). Alternate private and off-farm sources of income constituted only 12 percent of household income, much as in Wugong. Table 5.2 displays the types of incomes just as in the previous table, only this time the overall measure of inequality is not the gini coefficient but the

Table 5.2

Income Distributions in a Rich and Average Team (coefficients of variation)

Indicator Household collective income Household total income Per capita collective income Per capita total income

Rich team (Wugong, 1977) .47 .43 .37 .35

Average team (Guangdong, 1978) .50 .44 .43 .33

Sources: “Rich,” Wugong data for 1977 from our survey. “Average team” data from 1978 report on 27 out of the households in team 12, Xintang brigade, Tangtang commune, Guangdong province, as reported in Keith Griffin and Ashwani Saith, “The Pattern of Income Equality in Rural China,” Oxford Economic Papers 34 (1982), p. 203

Note: The coefficient of variation is the standard deviation divided by the mean income for each category of income distribution. It provides a measure of inequality analogous to the gini coefficient. Like the gini coefficient, a larger coefficient indicates greater inequality.

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