Gov't Statistician Cites New Data to Say Income Inequality Is Narrowing

(Beijing) – A measure of income inequality called the Gini coefficient has dropped in recent years due to government measures to close the gap between urbanites and farmers, the director of the official statistics bureau says.

Ma Jiantang, the head of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), said on January 20 that China's coefficient dropped from 0.473 in 2013 to 0.469 in 2014. He interpreted this as a sign income discrepancies had narrowed.