Professor Wang Feng Discusses Public Transfers and Inequality in China

November 13, 2020

With expanded fiscal capacity and rising concerns over economic inequality, the Chinese government in the last decade and a half has vastly rebuilt and expanded its social welfare regime. In a public lecture on October 7, 2020, Wang Feng, Professor of Sociology at UC Irvine, examined the distribution of public transfers in education, health care and pension across generations and income groups in China.

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Using the National Transfer Accounts (NTA) methodology and both micro-level survey data and macro-level government statistics, Professor Wang’s lecture revealed that the gap in receiving public transfers between the rich and the poor was reduced notably from 2010 to 2014. Public transfers also became more progressive in relative terms, with the bottom income group receiving much higher public transfers relative to their per capita household income than the wealthier groups.

You can watch the video of this lecture here. This lecture was moderated by Qin Gao, Professor and Director of the Columbia China Center for Social Policy, which co-hosted the lecture with the Weatherhead East Asian Institute.

Columbia Affiliations
China Center for Social Policy