ABSTRACT
Introduction The rapidly rising income inequality that has accompanied the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) phenomenal economic growth in the past three decades has been a key topic in policy discussions and academic research in and outside the PRC in recent years. According to the latest government releases, the Gini coefficient of per capita household disposable income hit a peak of 49.1 in 2008 and dropped somewhat to 47.4 in 2012 (NBS 2013). These figures represent a significant jump from its level of about 30 in the early 1980s (Ravallion and Chen 2007).1
