And the Poor Get Poorer...
China has recorded its first rise in poverty since economic reforms began in 1978—the number of farmers in poverty increased by 800,000 last year. According to the PRC government's poverty task force, more than one in 11 rural residents now lives on less than ¥637 ($76.93) per year. Beijing blamed the increase on the emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome and natural disasters, citing droughts and flooding in Anhui, Heilongjiang, Henan, Shaanxi, and Sichuan provinces.
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China's economic inequality has moved to the top of the political agenda in recent years. According to a Chinese Academy of Social Sciences report released earlier this year, the average urban dweller earns 3.1 times more than his rural counterpart and, accounting for the difference in education and health benefits, the income gap between China's urban and rural residents is among the worst in the world. China's Gini coefficient, a standard measure of general economic inequality, shows China's income distribution to be as unequal as that of the United States—and more unequal than two-thirds of all countries.
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China Starts "Two-Girl" Policy
China has started awarding bonus pensions to parents of two girls to correct the skewed gender ratio, which shows 117 boys born for every 100 girls nationwide. Zhao Baige, a vice minister of the State Population and Family Planning Commission, announced in August a 15-province pilot program in which rural parents of two girls, as well as parents with only one child or parents with a disabled child, would be given at least ¥600 annually after turning 60 years old. (Rural parents whose first child is a girl are allowed to have a second child; parents of minority ethnic groups are also allowed to have multiple children.)
According to the Xinhua News Agency, President Hu Jintao said earlier this year that bringing China's newborn sex ratio back to parity by 2010 is one of the country's priorities.
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