Growing out of poverty: trends and patterns of urban poverty in China 1988–2002

This paper estimates trends in absolute poverty in urban China from 1988 to 2002 using the Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP) surveys. Poverty incidence curves are plotted, showing that poverty has fallen markedly during the period regardless of the exact location of the poverty line. Income inequality rose from 1988 to 1995 but has been fairly constant thereafter. Models of the determination of income and poverty reveal widening differentials by education, sex and party membership. Income from government anti-poverty programs has little impact on poverty, which has fallen almost entirely due to overall economic growth rather than redistribution.poverty, inequality, economic growth, welfare, public policy, China

Growing out of Poverty: Trends and Patterns of Urban Poverty in China 1988–2002

This paper estimates trends in absolute poverty in urban China from 1988 to 2002 using the Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP) surveys. Poverty incidence curves are plotted, showing that poverty has fallen markedly during the period regardless of the exact location of the poverty line. Income inequality rose from 1988 to 1995 but has been fairly constant thereafter. Models of the determination of income and poverty reveal widening differentials by education, sex and party membership. Income from government anti-poverty programs has little impact on poverty, which has fallen almost entirely due to overall economic growth rather than redistribution.poverty, inequality, economic growth, welfare, public policy, China

The economics of Communist Party membership - The Curious case of rising numbers and wage premium during China’s transition

Why is it that, as the Chinese Communist Party has loosened its grip, abandoned its core beliefs, and marketized the economy, its membership has risen markedly along with the economic benefits of joining? We use three national household surveys, spanning eleven years, to answer this question with respect to labour market rewards in urban China. We conceptualize individual demand for Party membership as an investment in “political capital” that brings monetary rewards in terms of higher wages. This wage premium has risen with the growing wage differentials associated with the emergence of a labour market and the continuing value of political status in the semi-marketized transitional economy. However, a demand-side explanation does not explain the fact that the wage premium is higher for the personal characteristics that reduce the probability of membership. We develop an explanation in terms of a rationing of places and a scarcity value for members with those characteristics.China, Communist Party, labour market, economic transition, wages

Pulmonary diseases induced by ambient ultrafine and engineered nanoparticles in twenty-first century.

Air pollution is a severe threat to public health globally, affecting everyone in developed and developing countries alike. Among different air pollutants, particulate matter (PM), particularly combustion-produced fine PM (PM2.5) has been shown to play a major role in inducing various adverse health effects. Strong associations have been demonstrated by epidemiological and toxicological studies between increases in PM2.5 concentrations and premature mortality, cardiopulmonary diseases, asthma and allergic sensitization, and lung cancer. The mechanisms of PM-induced toxicological effects are related to their size, chemical composition, lung clearance and retention, cellular oxidative stress responses and pro-inflammatory effects locally and systemically. Particles in the ultrafine range (<100 nm), although they have the highest number counts, surface area and organic chemical content, are often overlooked due to insufficient monitoring and risk assessment. Yet, ample studies have demonstrated that ambient ultrafine particles have higher toxic potential compared with PM2.5. In addition, the rapid development of nanotechnology, bringing ever-increasing production of nanomaterials, has raised concerns about the potential human exposure and health impacts. All these add to the complexity of PM-induced health effects that largely remains to be determined, and mechanistic understanding on the toxicological effects of ambient ultrafine particles and nanomaterials will be the focus of studies in the near future

Understanding urban wage inequality in China 1988–2008: evidence from quantile analysis

This paper examines change in wage gaps in urban China from 1988 to 2008 by estimating quantile regressions on CHIPS data. It applies the Machado and Mata (2005) decomposition, finding sharp increases in inequality largely due to changes in the wage structure. During 2002–08, changes in the returns to education and experience have been equalizing. However, changes in other categories of wage differential—by sex, occupation, ownership, industrial sector, and province—widened inequality. The gender gap continued to rise, as did the gap between white collar and blue collar workers, and between manufacturing and other sectors

2017-19 Consumption Inequality in Urban China, 1995-2013

We use 1995, 2002 and 2013 CHIP data to investigate the urban household consumption expenditure inequality. The overall inequality of urban household consumption expenditure measured by Gini coefficient slightly decreases from 0.33 in 1995 to 0.32 in 2002, but increases to 0.36 in 2013, which follows the same trend with that of urban income but is severer. However, the percentile ratio of p90/p10 shows that consumption inequality increases all the time. Besides, the inequality of basic food consumption is much smaller than the overall consumption, its contribution to the overall consumption inequality decreases from 20% in 1995 and 2002 to 15% by 2013, and its share also decreases steadily from 34% in 1995 to 30% in 2002 and further to 24% in 2013, and finally its share steadily decreases as the overall consumption level moving up the distribution in each of the three years. The inequality of housing consumption is much larger than overall consumption but decreasing over time, its contribution to the overall consumption inequality increases 35% in earlier two years to 40% by 2013, and its share also sharply increases from 23% in 1995 to 30% in 2002 and further to 38% in 2013, besides its share shows upward sloping as overall consumption level increases in each of the three years

Understanding urban wage inequality in China 1988 - 2008: Evidence from quantile analysis

This paper examines change in wage gaps in urban China by estimating quantile regressions on CHIPS data. It applies the Machado and Mata (2005) decomposition, finding sharp increases in inequality from 1988 to 1995 and from 2002 to 2008 largely due to changes in the wage structure. The analysis reports how the returns to education and experience vary across wage quantiles, along with wage differentials by sex and party membership. The role of industrial structure, ownership reform and occupational change are also estimated. In the recent period, 2002 to 2008, falls in the returns to education and experience have been equalising. However, changes in every other category of observed wage differential - by sex, occupation, ownership, industrial sector and province - have served to widened inequality. The gender gap continued to rise, as did the gap between white collar and blue collar workers, and between manufacturing and most other industrial sectors

The effects of the state sector on wage inequality in urban China: 1988 - 2007

This paper examines the effects of state sector domination on wage inequality in urban China. Using Chinese Household Income Project surveys, we conduct two exercises: with quantile regression analysis, we identify wage gaps across the distribution and over time; and we employ the Machado and Mata (2005) decomposition to investigate how urban wage inequality was affected by the changes in wage structure and employment share of the state sector. We find that since the radical state sector reforms designed to reduce over-staffing and improve efficiency since the late 1990s, urban wage gaps were narrowed due to the reduction of employment share in the state sector; the wage premium of the state sector in comparison with the non-state sector increased significantly; and changes in the wage structure of the labour market caused the rise in urban wage inequality

Smart and Secure CAV Networks Empowered by AI-Enabled Blockchain: Next Frontier for Intelligent Safe-Driving Assessment

Securing safe-driving for connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) continues to be a widespread concern despite various sophisticated functions delivered by artificial intelligence for in-vehicle devices. Besides, diverse malicious network attacks become ubiquitous along with the worldwide implementation of the Internet of Vehicles, which exposes a range of reliability and privacy threats for managing data in CAV networks. Combined with the fact that the capability of existing CAVs in handling intensive computation tasks is limited, this implies a need for designing an efficient assessment system to guarantee autonomous driving safety without compromising data security. Motivated by this, in this article, we propose a novel framework, namely Blockchain-enabled intElligent Safe-driving assessmenT (BEST), that offers a smart and reliable approach for conducting safe driving supervision while protecting vehicular information. Specifically, a promising solution that exploits a long short-term memory model is introduced to assess the safety level of the moving CAVs. Then, we investigate how a distributed blockchain obtains adequate trustworthiness and robustness for CAV data by adopting a byzantine fault tolerance-based delegated proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. Simulation results demonstrate that our presented BEST gains better data credibility with a higher prediction accuracy for vehicular safety assessment when compared with existing schemes. Finally, we discuss several open challenges that need to be addressed in future CAV networks.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures. This paper has been accepted for publication by IEEE Networ

Growing out of poverty: trends and patterns of urban poverty in China 1988–2002

This paper estimates trends in absolute poverty in urban China from 1988 to 2002 using the Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP) surveys. Poverty incidence curves are plotted, showing that poverty has fallen markedly during the period regardless of the exact location of the poverty line. Income inequality rose from 1988 to 1995 but has been fairly constant thereafter. Models of the determination of income and poverty reveal widening differentials by education, sex and party membership. Income from government anti-poverty programs has little impact on poverty, which has fallen almost entirely due to overall economic growth rather than redistribution