Income Distribution among the Elderly in Urban China: Political and Human Capital in the Post-Reform Era

Using data from a 1992 nationally representative survey, this paper examines income inequality among the elderly in contemporary urban China. Focusing on the potential disequalizing impact of economic reforms, it shows that unequal access to pension coverage and preferential pensions rewarding political capital are important sources of income inequality among the elderly. It also shows that opportunities in the emerging labor market for retirees are more egalitarian than previously suggested. The continued importance of direct returns to political capital exposes the limitations of the prevailing approach, taken by existing studies of income inequality in post-socialist or reformingsocialist economies, which focuses exclusively on productive and redistributive resources. Dataset used: Survey of the Support for the Elderly in Urban China: China, 1992. The Authors James M. Raymo is a doctoral student at the Population Studies Center, University of Michigan. Yu Xie is the John Stephenson Perrin Professor of Sociology and Research Associate at the Population Studies Center, University of Michigan. Acknowledgments An earlier version of this paper was presented at the meeting of the International Sociology Association, Research Committee on Social Stratification, Ann Arbor, MI, August 1996. We would like to acknowledge the helpful comments of participants in that conference.