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Moves into and out of privileged neighborhoods as well as moves into and out of disadvantaged neighborhoods in metropolitan Sweden are studied using register data on all moves by adults that took place between 2004 and 2006. Based on estimated multivariate models, we find that, for all four types of moves, age, education, household income, household composition and its changes, as well as labor market status and its changes, matter. However, in addition, where the person was born can matter, as, with some exceptions, foreign-born people are less likely than natives with the same characteristics to move into a privileged neighborhood. Furthermore, foreign-born are typically less likely than natives with the same characteristics to move out of the metropolitan regions. However, considerable heterogeneity in probabilities to move between those born in different categories of countries is found. Adults born in high-income countries are, in many cases, moving similarly to natives with the same characteristics, while this is typically not found among people born in low-income countries. The latter might be due to fewer assets, lesser social capital, discrimination in the housing market or in housing finance, or by choice.

Household income per capita among the rural Yi, Manchurian ethnic minority groups and the Han majority is studied using data from the China Household Income Project 2002, 2013 and 2018. The disparity in total per capita income between the Yi and Han populations narrowed, while the average income among the Manchurian population remained relatively similar to that among the Han population. Decomposing total income into sources shows that the rapid increase in agricultural income among the Yi was a main reason why the disparity in income compared to the two other ethnic groups narrowed. Nevertheless, it is true that the reliance on agricultural income among the Yi became less extreme as wage employment and migration increased. The Manchurian group and the Han group also experienced rapid increases in wages and self-employment income. The aggregated value of transfers from the public sector was similar for all three ethnic groups.

The incidence of working for earnings beyond the normal pension age of 55 for females and 60 for males in urban China and Russia is investigated using micro-data for 2002, 2013, and 2018. Estimated logit models show that, in both countries, the probability of working after normal retirement age is positively related to living with a spouse only, being healthy, and having a higher education level but is negatively associated with age, the scale of pension and, in urban China, being female. We find that seniors in urban Russia are more likely to work for earnings than their counterparts in China. Two possible reasons for this difference are ruled out: cross-country differences in health status and the age distribution among elderly people. We also show that working beyond the normal retirement age has a much stronger negative association with earnings in urban China than in urban Russia. This is consistent with the facts that the normal retirement age is strictly enforced in urban China and seniors attempting to work face intensive competition from younger migrant workers. We conclude that China can learn from Russia that it has a substantial potential for increasing employment among healthy people under 70.

Defining the 'global middle class' as being neither poor nor rich in the developed world, we estimate the size of the global middle class in China and 33 other countries and analyze China's expanding middle class in international perspective. China's global middle class has grown rapidly and has been catching up with that in developed countries. By 2018 China's global middle class constituted 25 percent of China's population; in absolute size it was nearly double the size of the global middle class in the US and similar in size to that in Europe. Cross-country analysis of the relationship between the middle-class population share versus GDP per capita reveals an inverted-U pattern. China is not an outlier from the cross-country pattern, but the speed with which its middle-class has expanded is unusual. The only other countries with similarly large, rapid expansions of the middle class are transition economies.

Dibao receipt in rural and in urban areas of China is contrasted using household data from seven province-level units. The probability of Dibao-receipt is positively related to how many persons in the household who are older, adults who do not work, and if the household head is not healthy. Means testing of household income is more stringent in urban areas while low household wealth is more important for Dibao-receipt in rural areas. In rural China, membership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) increases the probability of Dibao receipt. A larger proportion ethnic minority households than majority households receive Dibao.

This study contributes to the literature on inequality of opportunity (IOp) in China by covering a longer and more recent span of time, employing better measures of given characteristics, and analyzing IOp for household income per capita with comparisons to individual income. Furthermore, we study how IOp differs between the rural- and urban-born, and how IOp changes across birth cohorts and with age. We use 2002, 2013 and 2018 data from the Chinese Household Income Study and focus on income inequality among working-age persons. Between the years of study, IOp in China declined, especially between 2013 and 2018. In 2002 the large contributors to IOp were region, hukou type at birth, and parents' characteristics. In 2018 the contributions of region, hukou type at birth and parents' occupation had decreased, but that of parents' education had increased. We find that IOp is larger among those born in rural than urban China. Furthermore, IOP's contribution to total inequality within each birth cohort is highest earlier in individuals' work lives and declines with age. IOp is higher for older than younger birth cohorts, reflecting that younger cohorts have benefited from increased opportunities associated with China's reforms and opening up.

The changes in the employment structure in rural China are studied with a focus on off farm self-employment. Data from the China Household Income Project surveys covering the same 14 provinces from 1988 to 2018 are used. We find that the proportion of adults in rural China with self-employment as their primary form of off-farm employment increased from only 2 percent in 1988 to 11 percent in 2013, with no further increases through 2018. In 1988 and 1995, the rate of self-employment was highest in the eastern region, but thereafter, this regional pattern disappeared. The probability of being self-employed in rural China was higher among married males than among unmarried persons. Having had a migration experience increases the probability of being self-employed. We also report that since 1995, self-employed households have a higher average income than other categories of households. Based on estimates of income functions, we conclude that the income premium from being self-employed increased rapidly from 1988 to 1995 to become remarkably large when only a few adults were self-employed. However, as a larger fraction of the rural population has entered self-employment, the payoff from being self-employed has rapidly diminished, although in 2018, it was nevertheless still substantial.

Many European high-income countries face a rapid increase in the number of immigrants from low- and middle-income countries reaching the normal pension age. Thus, it is increasingly relevant to ask: how are older migrants from such countries faring? Here we study poverty rates and determinants of poverty among natives and persons born in Bosnia, Iran, Iraq, Yugoslavia and Turkey living in Denmark or Sweden in 2010. Income data on all such persons aged 65 to 82 living in the two destination countries are analysed. In both Denmark and Sweden, we report much higher poverty rates among the immigrants studied than among natives. Estimated probability models show that being poor is related to a person's education, family status and age, as well as year of arrival in the destination country and the labour market and his or her residential status at the age of 55. However, the labour market in the destination country at the time of arrival also matter. Persons born in Yugoslavia or Turkey who had immigrated to Denmark during the '70s and '80s were more likely to be in poverty in 2010 that their counterparts with the same characteristics who had immigrated to Sweden.

Using large samples of persons born in 1985 we investigate the relationship between characteristics of the neighbourhood where young people lived as adolescents and the probability that they will receive social assistance when aged 19, 20, and 21, for the three Swedish metropolitan regions - Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö. We estimated logistic regressions separately for the majority population and "visible immigrants" and included several characteristics of the neighbourhood and of the parental home in the specification. The probability of social assistance receipt as a young adult is strongly positively linked to social assistance receipt in the parental home and to several other factors. The major result is that the association with social assistance receipt in the neighbourhood where a person lived at age 16 remains strong when parental receipt and a number of other neighbourhood characteristics are controlled for. We conclude that measures to increase the education qualifications and various efforts to create jobs for young adults have a potential of decrease social assistance receipt among young adults. In addition there is also room for spatially focused measures aiming to reduce residential segregation and the demand for social assistance in locations with a comparably high rate of social assistance receipt.

We investigate whether Chinese household incomes have caught up to those of the middle class in the developed world. Using nationwide survey data for 2002 and 2013, we find considerable catch up. Defining the global middle class as being neither poor nor rich in the developed world, we estimate that China's global middle class grew rapidly after 2002, reaching 250 million in 2013. We describe the characteristics of this middle class, which is predominately urban, in the eastern region, and wage-earning. A distinct business middle class exists but is relatively small. Analysis of the chances of attaining the middle class reveals the importance of an individual's circumstances at birth. Parents' education and occupation matter. Being born with an urban hukou provides a large advantage. For those born with a rural hukou, the most effective pathways to the middle class are migration and, if possible, obtaining an urban hukou.

This paper presents several arguments for applying a relative poverty line to urban China. For example between 2002 and 2013 urban residents in China changed their assessment of how much money that is necessary. Data from the China Household Income Project indicate that while, assessed against an absolute poverty line, poverty among Chinese urban residents was already fairly low in 2007, increasing proportions fell under a relative poverty line from 1988 to 2007. Thus income growth in urban China was more rapid in the middle segments of the income distribution that at it's lower segments. In 2013, at least as large fractions of the urban population as in many rich countries were deemed poor in relative terms. We also specify and estimate logit models for 2002 and 2013 after first having divided the samples into children, adults and elderly people. We find that the risk of being relative poor in urban China both years under study was positively associated with lack of work among adult household members, a low education of the household head, living in a low-income city, the number of children, and being aged and not receiving a pension. Pensions for the aged in combination with co-residency with adult children or with other adults have kept poverty rates among the increasing number of elderly in urban China from exceeding those among adults. In contrast, relative poverty rates are somewhat higher among children than among the entire urban population.

We investigate the evolution of wage levels, wage inequality, and wage determinants among urban residents in China using China Household Income Project data from 1988, 1995, 2002, 2007, and 2013. Average wage grew impressively between each pair of years. Wage inequality had long been on the increase, but between 2007 and 2013 no clear changes occurred. In 1988, age and wages were positively related throughout working life, but more recently older workers' wages have been lower than those of middle-aged workers. The relationship between education and wages was weak in 1988 but strengthened rapidly thereafter - a process that came to a halt in 2007. During the period in which China was a planned economy the gender wage gap was small in urban China, but it widened rapidly between 1995 and 2007. We also report the existence of a premium for being employed in a foreign-owned firm or in the state sector.

This paper examines immigrant poverty at an older age in Sweden with an emphasis on late-in-life immigrants. We analyse tax data for the entire Swedish-born and non-Swedish-born population. The poverty status of a household is assessed using two criteria. First, the disposable income of the household in which the person lived in 2007 must be below 60 per cent of the median equivalent in-come in Sweden as a whole. Second, to be classified as 'twice poor' a household net assets must be below SEK 10,000. The results indicate that three out of four Swedish-born older persons were not classified as poor by either of the criteria, and only one per cent by both criteria. In contrast, among older persons born in low-income countries almost three out of four were classified as poor according to one of the criteria and not fewer than one in three according to both. Results of estimating logistic models indicate that the risk of being considered poor according to both criteria is strongly positively related to one's age at immigration. Our results indicate that it is crucial that migrants, particularly those who arrive after age 40, be better integrated into the Swedish labour market. To alleviate pov-erty among those migrants who are already of older age, increased transfers are probably the only possible alternative.

Using data from the urban household surveys of the China Household Income Project for the years 1995, 2002, 2007 and 2013, we provide consistent estimates of the gender wage gap in urban China and investigate those factors that have contributed to this gap. Similar to past studies, we find a substantial and progressive widening of the gap from 1995 to 2007. Based on new data for 2013, however, we find that from 2007 to 2013 the gender wage gap narrowed. For 2013 we estimate the gender wage gap at between 19 percent and 25 percent. Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions reveal that the contributions of the differences in characteristics between women and men to the wage gap declined over time, and by 2013 the gap is largely unexplained. We identify key factors underlying the gender wage gap in recent years, specifically, individual characteristics, such as age, education, marriage, and children, as well as employment sector and occupation.

This chapter investigates how household income, income inequality, and poverty among urban residents in China have developed since 1988, with an emphasis on the period from 2007 to 2013. We use data from the China Household Income Project (CHIP) to show that during a period when many countries in the West were experiencing stagnating or falling incomes, household incomes in urban China were growing by an average of 7 percent per annum. However, unlike during previous periods, earnings were growing by not more than 3 percent per annum, but pensions and imputed rents of owner-occupied housing were growing more rapidly. The trend whereby fewer persons in urban China have incomes that are lower than the poverty line, expressed as the constant purchasing power, continued between 2007 and 2013. We also show that income growth from 2007 to 2013 was slower in the lower part of the income distribution and thus the trend of increased income inequality in urban China continued. This also applied to the number of people falling below the relative poverty line.

This paper analyses how age at immigration to Sweden and getting a first foothold in the labor market is related. We estimate hazard rate models using registry data on all persons who arrived in each of the years 1990, 1994, 1998, and 2002. The results show that the number of years taken to get a foothold in the Swedish labor market increases rapidly by age among immigrants from middle- and low-income countries aged 40 +. Most individuals who are born in middle- or low-income countries who immigrate after age 50 never get a foothold in the Swedish labor market.

The number of private enterprises in China has grown rapidly, and donations from them are an important source of philanthropy in China today. This paper investigates donations given in 2011 by private enterprises using a survey of data covering all 31 provincial-level units of China. The data show that philanthropy practised by Chinese private enterprises is widespread, but the amounts of donations are unequally distributed. Furthermore, donations are positively related to a company's profit and in most cases also to the owner's political participation as expressed in membership in the People's Congress (PC) as well as the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) at different levels. Donating is also positively related to the presence of a branch of the Communist Party of China and a trade union within the firm. In contrast, there is little support for donations being related to the characteristics of the major owner in the business, such as their gender, age, previous employment experience, party membership or to the governance structure or location of the private firms.

In high-income countries, not completing secondary school often entails a high risk of social exclusion. Using data on young adults born in 1985 that grew up in metropolitan Sweden, we study factors associated with not graduating from upper secondary school at age 21. Our hypothesis is that if a young person sees examples of people who are not able to earn a living despite having a long education, such negative examples are influential. Results from estimated logistic models are consistent with the hypothesis.

This paper asks if economic growth and steps towards a market economy have affected earnings gaps between the Han and nine large urban ethnic minorities: Zhuang, Hui, Manchurian, Tujia, Uighur, Miao, Tibetan, Mongol and Korean. It also asks how earnings premiums and earnings penalties have changed for the nine ethnic minorities. For the analysis we use a subsample of the 2005 China's Inter-Census Survey. We find examples of three different changes over time in earnings premiums and earnings penalties: One ethnic minority for whom the development has been more favourable than for the Han majority; a second category in which development has been similar; and a third category for which development has been unfavourable. We conclude from the analysis that it can be misleading to infer the experience of one ethnic minority from that of another.

This study uses China's Inter-Census Survey 2005 to analyse the extent migration behaviour among 14 large ethnic minority groups and the Han majority. Results show that the probability to migrate to all types of destinations varies by province of origin, decreases by age, and in most cases, by expected income at the origin. Furthermore the probability to migrate is found to typically increase by length of education and decrease for females by the number of children. In most cases investigated, a minority ethnicity reduces migration probabilities for people registered in rural China. This is particularly the case for persons belonging to the Uyghur and Tibetan ethnic groups, but also for the Mongolian, Bai, Yao and Tujia groups. In contrast, Korean and Hui have a higher probability of migration than the majority. For people with an urban hukou there are fewer examples that minority ethnicity affects probability to migrate.

This paper discusses data used in publishing statistics on earnings, the distribution of household income and poverty in China by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) which is widely used by policy makers, international agencies and researchers. Unlike many other countries, China until recently had a dual system of household surveys - one rural and one urban. This has had consequences for providing official data on wages, income and poverty which we discuss along with other challenges. Since the end of the 1980s, researchers have been active in the construction of large databases aimed at mapping earnings, household income and poverty, and we present seven of these in the paper.

Disparities in length of schooling between the largest Muslim minority in China, the Hui, and the Han majority are investigated. We use household data collected in Ningxia autonomous region in 2007. It is found that compared with Han persons of the same age and gender, Hui persons have shorter educations with the exception of young and middle-aged urban males who have twelve years of schooling, on average. Particularly noteworthy is that as many as 45 percent of adult rural Hui females are not literate. Possible reasons for the shorter educations of Hui in many segments of the population are numerous. We show that the incentive to invest in length of schooling is smaller among Hui than Han as the association between education and income is weaker. We also report that Hui parents spend fewer resources on education than Han parents and that fewer years of schooling for Hui in the first generation helps to explain why Hui persons in the second generation have shorter educations.

Earnings inequality and earnings determination in urban China 2002 and Russia 2003 are compared using samples covering large parts of the two countries. The results from estimated earnings functions are put in perspective of the outcome from a similar comparison made at the end of the 1980s. We confirm that earnings inequality has increased rapidly in both countries and is found to be similar across countries. As at the end of the 1980s, the gender wage gap is larger in Russia where earnings reach a maximum at a lower age than in China. The association between education and income in China has increased to become stronger than in Russia. The earnings penalty of being employed in the public service sector in Russia has increased while the publically employed in China enjoy a positive payoff of limited magnitude.

Using a household sample survey for 2006 we show that the Hui population in the rural part of Ningxia autonomous region of China is disadvantaged compared to the Han majority as regards length of education and household per capita wealth. Yet there is no gap in average disposable income between the two ethnic groups and poverty rates are very similar. This paradox is due to members of Hui households earning more income outside the farm than members of Han households. Particularly young male Hui living in poor villages have a remarkably high likelihood of migrating, thereby bringing home income to their households.

Intergenerational income elasticities are estimated using samples for urban China (covering many cities) for the years 1995 and 2002 and compared with results from other studies. We find that the income relation between the pairs: sons and fathers, sons and mothers and daughters and mothers, are in 2002 all similar in magnitude. In contrast the relation between daughters' and fathers' income is weaker. The income relationship between offspring and mothers was weaker in 1995 than in 2002. Our preferred estimates of income persistency for the son-father pairs of 0.47 for 1995 and 0.53 for 2002 are higher than what has been reported in the literature for several high-income countries with large welfare states. The strength of the income link between sons and fathers in urban China appears to be not very different from what has been reported for countries such as Brazil, Chile and the United States.

Social assistance receipt among immigrants in relation to receipt among natives in Sweden is investigated. A background of how the system is constructed is provided, statistical information reported, the literature surveyed and key results interpreted. Most out-payment for social assistance in Sweden refers to foreign born persons although the category makes up 14 percent of the population. While some part of the high costs can be attributed to needs to maintaining recent refugees, this is not the entire story. Immigrants tend to assimilate out of social assistance receipt. However, receipt continues to be higher than among in several characteristics identical natives many years after immigration among immigrants from not rich countries. The elevated probabilities of social assistance receipt among immigrants from not rich countries are mainly due to failures of integrating into the labor market at the destination.

Chapter from: 'Rising Inequality in China: Challenge to a Harmonious Society', edited by Shi Li, Hiroshi Sato and Terry Sicular.

Chapter from: 'Rising Inequality in China: Challenge to a Harmonious Society', edited by Shi Li, Hiroshi Sato and Terry Sicular.

This paper analyzes child poverty in Bangladesh and China during periods of rapid economic growth in both countries. It compares the extent as well as profile of child poverty in both countries. Comparisons on the extent of child poverty, over time and across countries, are made using a decomposition framework attributing child poverty differences to differences in the three components mean child income, demographic circumstances and the distribution of child income. Child poverty is found to be more extensive in Bangladesh than in China, and is very much a problem for rural children in both countries. The results show that economic growth can reduce child poverty but does not do so always. For understanding changes over time and across countries in the extent of child poverty, it can be necessary to also consider changes/differences in the distribution of child income as well as in the demographic composition.

This paper takes a fresh look at child poverty at the neighbourhood level in the three metropolitan regions of Sweden using unique data for 1990, 1996 and 2002. We find that the number of neighbourhoods with high child poverty rates is much larger in 2002 than in 1990, but also that most poor children in the three regions live outside poor neighbourhoods. A disproportionally large fraction of children with backgrounds from low- and middle-income countries live in poor neighbourhoods. Regression analysis shows that high neighbourhood poverty rates are mainly due to parents' low employment and to low parental education.

This paper investigates the development of poverty in Sweden using micro data derived from tax files for the city of Göteborg for the years 1925, 1936, 1947, 1958 as well as more recent (1983, 1994 and 2003) information. We define poverty as living in a household with a disposable income lower than a poverty line that represents a constant purchasing power all years, as well as poverty lines defined as 60 percent of contemporary median income. Clear reductions of poverty from 1925 to 1947 as well as from 1958 to 1983 are found. We argue that an important poverty reducing mechanism during both periods was narrowing earnings disparities. Further we claim that the poverty reduction from the end of the 1950s to the first half of the 1980s was the outcome of improved transfer systems as well as the establishment of pronounced characteristics of present-day Sweden: the dual earner system.

Immigrant and native child poverty in Denmark, Norway and Sweden 1993 to 2001 is investigated using large sets of panel data. While native children face yearly poverty risks of less than 10 percent in all three countries and for all years investigated the increasing proportion of immigrant children with an origin in middle and low income countries have poverty risks that varies from 38 and up to as much as 58 percent. At the end of the observation period one third of the poor children in Norway have an immigrant origin, and that corresponding proportion is as high as about a half in Denmark as well as in Sweden. The strong overrepresentation of immigrant children from low and middle income countries when measured in yearly data is also found when applying a longer accounting period. We find that child poverty rates are generally high shortly after arrival to the new country, and typically decreases with years since immigration. Multivariate analysis shows that parents years since immigration and education affect risks of the number of periods in persistent poverty. While a native child is very unlikely to spend nine years in poverty, the corresponding risk for a child to a newly arrived immigrant from Turkey was found to be far from negligible. Much of the pattern is similar across the three countries but there are also some differences.

While some workers in China attain senior professional level and senior cadre level status (Chuzhang and above), others attain middle rank including middle rank of professional and cadre (Kezhang). This aspect of the Chinese labor force has attracted surprisingly little attention in the literature, a fact which this paper aims to rectify. We define various segments of the urban population in work-active ages and use data from the Chinese Income Project (CHIP) covering eastern, central and western China for 1995 and 2002. For 2002, persons of high rank make up 3 percent and persons of middle rank make up 14 percent of persons in work-active ages. Factors that affect a person's likelihood of having high or middle rank are investigated by estimating a multinomial probit model. We find that education, age and gender strongly affect the probability of being employed as a worker of high rank. There is relatively little income inequality among workers of high rank as well as among workers of middle rank. Mean income and household wealth per capita of highly-ranked workers developed more favorably than for other segments of the population studied, and personal income is more polarized by segment in 2002 than in 1995. Workers of high rank, and to a lesser degree, workers of middle rank, are among the winners in economic terms while the increasingly large category of non-workers are the losers. Rates of return to education have increased but income function analysis indicates that this provides only a partial explanation for the increased favorable income situation for workers of high and middle ranks.

Poverty among ethnic minorities and the majority in rural China for the years 2000, 2001 and 2002 is investigated taking a dynamic view and using a large sample covering 22 provinces. Based on the National Bureau of Statistics' low income line, almost one-third of the ethnic minorities experienced poverty during the three years studied while the corresponding proportion among the ethnic majority was only about half as high. Still, by far most of the poor in rural China belong to the ethnic majority. The relatively high poverty rates for ethnic minorities in rural China are found to be due to higher rates of entry than for the majority, while differences in exit rates across ethnicities are few. To a large extent, ethnic poverty differences can be attributed to differences in location together with temporary and persistent poverty in rural China having a very clear spatial character. Poverty is concentrated to the western region and villages with low average income. Determinants of persistent and temporary poverty in rural China differ due to location as well as household characteristics.

This study analyses the development of the economic well-being of the elderly in Sweden since 1990 - a period characterized by increased influence from the financial market and extreme economic events using data from the Household Income Survey. The elderly were not isolated as pensions were cut, full indexation abandoned and taxes increased during Sweden's deep recession in the 1990s. Instead, relatively, pensioners fared better than the working age population. On the other hand, poverty increased in absolute terms. In contrast in the following years of rapid economic growth, the growth in the income of the pensioners fell behind that of workers and relative poverty increased. The analysis shows that the limited resources of many of the elderly put them close to a socially interesting poverty line. Income inequality among the elderly has increased with an increase in the importance of capital income for the better off among the elderly, with a clear tendency towards delineation between the better and worse off, which we conclude has implications for public expenditures for the elderly. Overall, poverty among the elderly in Sweden remains low in an international perspective and our analysis leads us to conclude that the Swedish welfare state has maintained its resilience.

Since the second half of the 1990s economic restructuring in urban China has led to widespread joblessness and income insecurity. The rapid expansion of the system of social assistance, Di Bao, can be understood from this perspective. Using a survey covering large parts of urban China in 2002, we investigate factors affecting receipt and how receipt affects urban poverty. Results from estimating probability models indicate that social assistance receipt is strongly linked to joblessness among household members, the household’s expenditure burden, as well as the lack of financial assets. Further, a long education of the household head and membership in the Communist Party reduces the probability of receiving social assistance while having been sent to rural China during the Cultural Revolution increases it. For some types of households, receipt of Di Bao differs greatly across cities in China. The social assistance payments appear strongly targeted to the poor. However, as the Di Bao payments typically are small and many of the urban poor are not receivers, much urban poverty remains.

This paper investigates certain issues of economic and ethnic segregation from the perspective of children in the three metropolitan regions of Sweden by using a relative new operationalization of the neighbourhood concept. Neighbourhoods are clustered by population share of visible immigrants in proportion to share of native born residents. The target variable under study is child income based on income of parents. Inequality in child income 1990, 1996 and 2002 is studied by decomposing additively decomposable inequality indexes. Based on this, measures of residential economic polarisation and residential ethnic polarisation are obtained. Of major significance is that residential polarisation increased for all three regions and for both sub-periods 1990-1996 and 1996-2002. For example, while in the Stockholm region 7 percent of inequality in child income in 1990 was due to differences in mean income across neighbourhoods, the proportion had increased to as much as 22 percent in 2002. Ethnic residential polarisation increased as well and we report a relatively large overlap between economic and ethnic polarisation. Based on estimated regression models, we conclude that increased returns to parental education have forcefully contributed to larger economic polarisation among children in Swedish metropolitan regions.

Using new household survey data for 1995 and 2002, we investigate the size of China’s urban-rural income gap, the gap’s contribution to overall inequality in China, and the factors underlying the gap. Our analysis improves on past estimates by using a fuller measure of income, adjusting for spatial price differences and including migrants. Our methods include inequality decomposition by population subgroup and the Oaxaca- Blinder decomposition. Several key findings emerge. First, the adjustments substantially reduce China’s urban-rural income gap and its contribution to inequality. Nevertheless, the gap remains large and has increased somewhat over time. Second, after controlling for household characteristics, location of residence remains the most important factor underlying the urban-rural income gap. The only household characteristic that contributes substantially to the gap is education. Differences in the endowments of, and returns to, other household characteristics such as family size and composition, landholdings, and communist party membership are relatively unimportant. – China ; urban-rural inequality ; income

Subjective Poverty Line methodology is applied to rural China 2002 using a sample from 22 provinces. Respondents were asked two questions: one on amount of food necessary and another on amount of cash necessary for their households. The respondent's perception of how much cash is needed varies profoundly and positively by income in the county where the respondent lives. The findings provide an argument for increasing the official poverty line for China as average household income increases. Poverty in rural China is disproportionally concentrated to the western regions and to poor counties. Most of rural China's poverty can be attributed to households living outside classified poor areas. People living in a household with many members, those with a household head with a short education, and children face higher poverty risks than other persons.

In China hukou (the household registration system) imposes barriers on permanent migration from rural to urban areas. Using large surveys for 2002, we find that permanent migrants number about 100 million persons and constitute approximately 20 percent of all urban residents. Receiving a long education, being a cadre or becoming an officer in the People's Liberation Army are important career paths towards urbanisation and permanent migrants are much better-off then their counterparts left behind in rural China. The probability of becoming a permanent migrant is positively related to parental education, belonging to the ethnic majority and the parent's membership in the Communist Party. At the destination, most permanent migrants are economically well-integrated. They have a higher probability to be working than their urban-born counterparts and those who receive a hukou before age 25 typically earn at least as much as their urban-born counterparts. The exceptions for this are those permanent migrants who receive a hukou after age 25 and people who received their hukou through informal routes.

This paper investigates how ethnic minorities in rural China are faring compared with the ethnic majority. The village is the unit of analysis and large surveys for 2002 are used. Minority villages in northeast China are found to have a somewhat better economic situation than the average majority village, but minority villages in the southwest are clearly faring worse. Industrialisation, inputs in agricultural production, stock of human capital of the labour force, wage level on the local labour market as well as indicators of path dependency are all found to affect the economic situation of a village. Location is the single most important circumstance working against a favourable economic situation for minority villages in the north- and particularly the southwest. Low village income results in long-distance migration for many ethnic minorities, but for some minorities their ethnicity hinders migration.

The paper focuses on the problems of low income among immigrants, analysed by using comparable panel datasets for two Scandinavian welfare states. After a brief survey of a few earlier studies on immigrant poverty, we present Denmark and Sweden as interesting cases for comparative research. Cyclical profiles have been very different since the 1980s and both countries have experienced considerable differences with regard to the number and composition of immigrants from the less developed countries. Poverty rates, analysed relative to different background factors, are fairly high, in particular when considering the welfare state background of Denmark and Sweden. A number of differences are found in spite of the institutional similarities between the two countries. – poverty ; immigrant ; panel data

Swedish labor market programs appear large from an international perspective, yet their consequences are not fully investigated and understood. In this paper we estimate a switching regression model with training effect modeled as a random coefficient, partitioned in an observed and unobserved component. We investigate labor market training for three cohorts during the 80s and the beginning of the 90s on its effect on earnings. We separate the analysis between Swedish-born and foreign-born individuals to identify differences in their responses to training. The results indicate that there is positive sorting into training. We find that the proportion of trainees having positive rewards from training was not very different from the proportion having negative rewards. This means that the results do not support the view that from efficiency considerations, too few persons were enrolled in labor market training during this period. Differences in results across cohorts can be interpreted as being caused by rapid changes in the labor market. Further, consistent with results from several previous studies we find that being young often means no positive pay-off from training, and the same is found for persons with only primary education. In conflict with what earlier studies have shown, we found that males have a better pay-off from training than females. Rewards from training were higher for foreign-born than for natives and rewards among the former vary by place of birth.

The objective of this paper is to examine the extent to which an individual?s use of unemployment insurance (UI) as a young adult is influenced by past experience with the program, and by having had a parent who also collected UI. A major methodological challenge is to determine the extent to which the intergenerational correlation of UI status is ?spurious? or causal. Both the time to a first UI claim and the entire sequence of claims over an extended period are examined using two alternative ways of controlling for unobserved heterogeneity. The analysis is based upon longitudinal data on a cohort of young Canadian and Swedish men. It is found that parental use of UI shortens the time to a first UI claim in Canada, but not in Sweden. Subsequent participation in the Canadian program is influenced by parental UI history. In Sweden individual learning through past participation in UI?not family background?is the dominant avenue determining repeated participation.

Forces affecting the development of the distribution of income in OECD-countries are investigated by analyzing an unbalanced panel with information covering 16 countries from 1966 to 1994. Income inequality is measured with the Gini-coefficient of equivalent disposable income. The results suggest that many factors affect the development of inequality. Factors are strictly economic or outside a strictly defined market-sphere as well as being demographic. However, a relation between the unemployment rate and inequality could not be found.