The Rise of Wealth, Private Property, and Income Inequality in China

China’s share of world GDP increased from less than 3% in 1978 to 20% in 2015, while average income has increased by a factor of eight. How has the distribution of income and wealth within China changed over this critical period?The data. This paper relies on five types of data sources: national income and wealth macro accounts, household income surveys, income tax data, household wealth surveys, and wealth rankings. China’s national wealth estimates were derived from Material Planning System’s national accounts, the China Statistical Yearbook, and Compendium of Statistics, supplemented with National Bureau of Statistics’ asset data and recent studies.Income inequality was calculated from national household surveys by China’s Statistical Bureau, corrected for top income underestimations using tax administration data, and integrated with wealth and national account data for tax-exempt capital income. Wealth inequality was assessed using China Household Income Project and China Family Pa...