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雷达卡
1
INTRODUCTIO
China introduced its latest rural reforms in the late 1970s with the aim to turn its focus
towards a comprehensive development of both agricultural and non-agricultural
sectors. The sustainability of these reforms depends crucially on whether and to what extent China succeeds in enhancing the welfare of its people. Using the cross-section
data from rural Jiangsu and Sichuan provinces in 1990, the paper
primarily examines the role of household demographic characteristics on rural welfare
under the present Household Responsibility System (HRS).
One can identify two distinct traditions in the existing literature. The first group of papers primarily focuses on trends in the quality of life in the aftermath of the reform in China. For example, Lardy (1984) examines the trends in income and consumption expenditure to argue that the substantial increases in per capita income and consumption expenditure during 1978±83 need to be adjusted by huge increases in government subsidies as well as the price level as part of the deliberate policy of the government. Kueh (1988) analyses the relationship between pattern of food expenditure and growth in peasant incomes and points towards an inter-regional inequality in nutrient intakes between peasants of different provinces. Davis (1989)examines the deterioration in Chinese welfare policies pertaining to education, health,pensions schemes etc. to suggest that inequality is growing not only between different social classes (according to job status), but also between urban and rural area. Chai (1992) examines trends in material consumption as well as some qualitative aspects of living standards including life expectancy at birth, adult illiteracy, environmental degradation, consumer satisfaction; he argues that despite an impressive growth in consumption expenditure throughout the 80s (though at a slower rate during the second half), there was no improvement (if not deterioration) in life expectancy at birth, adult literacy rate, environmental degradation. Knight and Song (1992) focus on premature death in rural China as an important aspect of living standards to uggest that premature mortality has been rising in the 80s, especially since 1983. Sen (1987) also argues that the abolition of the rural communes in the late 70s has led to a
deterioration in the provision of health centre facilities causing mortality rate to rise,
irrespective of the growth in rural income. The second group of studies (Griffin and Griffin, 1984; Zhu, 1991; Griffin and Zhao, 1993; Hussain et al., 1994) based on aggregate quintile income data or wide-ranging household data, however, focuses on the rising income inequality in the aftermath of the reform, though generally low by the international standard. In particular, it has been found that inequality is higher in rural than in urban areas where non-farming incomes (as against farming income) are
more unequally distributed (Hussain et al., 1994).
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