The Gap Between Rich and Poor Grows in China -- restricted access to full text

People's Choice Award winner at the 7th Annual Symposium on Graduate Research and Scholarly Projects (GRASP) held at the Marcus Welcome Center, Wichita State University, May 4, 2011.Research completed at the Department of EconomicsWith the 30 years of reform and opening up, China has made lots of remarkable achievements. The national economy has a continued, rapid and healthy development, the average annual GDP growth rate remains at around 9%. People's living standard and personal income have been increasing markedly. However, with rapid economic growth, the income gap is also gradually widening. Recently, China has become one of the countries which have the largest gap between rich and poor. According to the World Bank report, Gini coefficient of China has been expanded to 0.458, over the internationally recognized warning level of 0.4. China's National Bureau of Statistics also shows that the richest 10% people hold 45% of the national wealth, while the poorest 10% people occupy only 1.4% of wealth. These figures fully demonstrate the extent of inequality in China, which will inevitably affect the social harmony and stability. In view of this, this article will use regression models to examine and analysis the gap between rich and poor in China and the influenced factors. All the data are from the China Statistical Yearbook. Because different provinces have different levels of economic development, this study will inspect the provincial units to find the most essential factor of the wealth gap in China