An Empirical Analysis on the Inter-provincial Income Inequality of Rural Residents in China——from the Perspective of Income Structure

The income structure is the result of the social change and development.We can determine from the changes in the income structure the cause of income inequality.Based on the calculation of Gini coefficie,we find that the income gap of rural residents across the provinces in China is widening.Based on the 1983-2008 data,we analyze the income structure changes of the rural residents and look into the causes of the income inequality utilizing the method of Gini coefficient decomposition.We find that the income inequality resulting from the wage and salary is the biggest reason for income disparity while the household operation income contributes to the alleviation of the gap and that the income from properties and transfer show the highest degree of inequality,but has an insignificant effect on the overall income inequality due to its low ratio in the income aggregate.