Markets and Income Inequality in Rural China: Political Advantage in an Expanding Economy

By Andrew G. Walder. American Sociological Review, 2002

170 citations recorded by the source corpus.

When market reform generates rapid growth in an agrarian subsistence economy, changes in inequality may be due to economic growth and structural change rather than to the intrinsic features of markets. The case of post-Mao China is examined using nationally representative survey data gathered in 1996 to address unresolved questions about findings from 1980s’ surveys. Well into reform's second decade, political officeholding has a large net impact on household income—comparable to that of operating a private enterprise. Contrary to findings based on earlier surveys and expectations about the impact of growth, cadre household advantages are stable across levels and forms of economic expansion. Returns to entrepreneur ship, however, decline sharply with the spread of wage employment. Future declines in relative returns to political position are therefore unlikely to occur due to the further spread of private household entrepreneurship, and theories of change based on this mechanism appear untenable.

Subfields: Gender Studies, Political Science and International Relations, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7f0b9e3a6ce2b0ee8199be8a15f54d4b5c14a719

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Citations in the corpus

Tightening Up: Declining Class Mobility during Russia's Market Transition (2004, background): “…processes, such as earnings determinants, elite formation, and labor-market transitions (e.g., Nee 1989, 1996; Rona-Tas 1994; Bian and Logan 1996; Xie and Hannum 1996; Zhou, Tuma, and Moen 1997; Gerber and Hout 1998; Cao and Nee 2000; Gerber 2000b, 2001a, 2001b, 2002; Zhou 2000; Walder 2002).”
Economic inequality – Is entrepreneurship the cause or the solution? A review and research agenda for emerging economies (2021, background): “As the entrepreneurial firms in the formal sector gain political power, these entrepreneurs can manipulate the rules governing the market and engage in corrupt activities, such as rent seeking (Knight, 2008; Ritchie, 2005; Walder, 2002).”
A framework for comparing entrepreneurship processes across nations (2005, background): “For example, the recent increased availability of wage employment in some areas of China has corresponded to decreasing relative returns to entrepreneurship (Walder, 2002).”
Organizational Forms and Multi-population Dynamics (2014, background): “Research on China’s economic transition mainly appears in two fields, sociology (Nee, 1989, 1992; Walder, 1995a, 2002) and economics (Che and Qian, 1998a; Jin and Qian, 1998; Li, Li, and Zhang, 2000).”
Engagement in entrepreneurship in emerging economies: Interactive effects of individual-level factors and institutional conditions (2016, background): “9 characterized by significant gaps between high and low income groups (Adelman, 1975; Walder, 2002).”