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GEB1305 China and The World - Lecture 3 (Part 2)(1) 複製
GEB1305 China and The World - Lecture 3 (Part 2)(1) 複製
Tutorial 2
Rural-Urban Inequali=es
Rural-Urban Inequalities
absolute poverty in China since the 1970s, there appears to have been an
even more drama+c growth in inequali+es between rural and urban areas
• China’s urban to rural income ra+o increased steadily from 1.8:1 in 1985 to
• Compared to households in which all members are registered as rural residents, for example, there
is a far lower probability that any household in which someone has an urban hukou will be
absolutely poor.
• Rural people also fall behind on the commonly used indicators of consumption and well-being.
• Rural households had a smaller proportion of a lower net income left over to spend on other
essentials such as housing, clothing, health and education, much less to invest in staging the life-
cycle rituals, gift-giving and banqueting activities that help to consolidate kinship bonds, forge
business deals and facilitate upward social mobility.
Rural-Urban Inequalities
• In comparison to rural residents, urban people spent four times more on education, culture
and recreational services in 2010.
• This not only perpetuated inequalities in income-earning potential, but also produced new
sources of inequality.
• For example, 71.16 out of 100 households in urban areas and only 10.37 out of 100 households
in rural areas owned a computer.
• In 2010, the number of hospital beds per thousand people was 5.33 in urban areas and 2.44 in rural
areas
• Urban people spent 2.6 +mes more than rural people on health care and medical expenses.
• As rural medical insurance schemes are under-resourced, rural residents pay high out-of-pocket
expenses for medical care.
• In 2008, the Na+onal Household Health Survey found that the early self-discharge rate among chronically
ill pa+ents was 11.5 percent in urban areas and 27.5 percent in rural areas.
• As poor health reduces income-genera+ng capacity, the rural–urban gap in health care reproduces other
rural–urban material inequali+es.
References