Yuheng LI
Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research,
Chinese Academy of Sciences
11A Datun Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, 100101, China;
liyuheng@igsnrr.ac.cn
Hans WESTLUND
Department of Urban Planning and Environment,
Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden
Abstract:
This paper investigates the relationship between overall inequality in China and the contributions of physical capital, human capital and social capital. The investment in physical capital tends to enlarge overall inequality while human capital helps to reduce the inequality. Human capital appears to be more influential than physical capital in overall inequality reduction in the research period. Social capital (people’s social networks) however, does not seem to exert any impact on overall inequality in the post-reform era. Possible policy implications of these results are that measures should be taken to pursue more even distributed investment of physical capital and to increase people’s education in order to reduce overall inequality in China.