Capital Accumulation, Private Property, and Rising Inequality in China, 1978–2015
By Thomas Piketty, Li Yang, G. Zucman. The American Economic Review, 2019
438 citations recorded by the source corpus.
We combine national accounts, surveys, and new tax data to study the accumulation and distribution of income and wealth in China from 1978 to 2015. The national wealth-income ratio increased from 350 percent in 1978 to 700 percent in 2015, while the share of public property in national wealth declined from 70 percent to 30 percent. We provide sharp upward revision of official inequality estimates. The top 10 percent income share rose from 27 percent to 41 percent between 1978 and 2015; the bottom 50 percent share dropped from 27 percent to 15 percent. China’s inequality levels used to be close to Nordic countries and are now approaching US levels. (JEL D31, E01, E23, O11, P24, P26, P36)
Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Political Science and International Relations, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/676c6be1c364267f277bfb142d25b6abd7a2bb6f
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Economics and Econometrics
- L. Chancel
- Thomas Piketty
- Emmanuel Saez
- G. Zucman
- Stefanie Stantcheva
- Bertrand Garbinti
- Jonathan Goupille-Lebret
- Daniel Waldenström
In Political Science and International Relations
In Sociology and Political Science
- L. Chancel
- Thomas Piketty
- Emmanuel Saez
- Eckhard Hein
- G. Zucman
- Stefanie Stantcheva
- J. Palma
- Markus Poschke
Citations in the corpus
- Indian Income Inequality, 1922‐2015: From British Raj to Billionaire Raj? (2019, positive): “We note however that income inequality was at similar levels in China and India in the early 1980s, it grew at a similar pace till the mid-2000s and was stabilized in China thereafter (see Piketty et al., 2019), while the rise continued in India.”