China to release wealth gap survey
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E-mail China.org.cn, February 7, 2012
China will publish an internationally accepted measure of how wealth is distributed in a bid to standardize urban and rural income surveys, said a leading statistician.
The integrated urban-rural income data is scheduled to be published in 2013 to pave the way for the publication of a national Gini coefficient that can measure income inequality, said Xie Hongguang, deputy chief of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Since 2000, the NBS has published a Gini coefficient that focused on rural income. The 2011 figure stood at 0.3897.
The coefficient measures income distribution on a scale of zero to one. A reading of zero means perfect equality, everyone earning the same amount, while one represents the greatest inequality.
A reading of between 0.3 and 0.4 indicates a relatively reasonable income gap while an index between 0.4 and 0.5, signals a larger income gap.
(China Daily contributed to this story.)
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