中国收入流动性再探讨

Further Discussion on China's Income Mobility

本文利用"中国营养健康调查"(1989-2006)数据,从不同角度测度了中国收入流动性,分析了其对社会福利的影响,并按不同收入阶层对收入流动性进行分解,最后考察了个体的教育特征对收入流动性的影响。研究发现,城市和农村的收入流动性都先上升后下降,在收入分配差距较大的背景下,收入流动性降低加固了现有收入分层,形成"穷者越穷、富者越富"的马太效应,收入流动性并未改善社会福利;低收入阶层对总体收入流动性贡献最大,但大都在中低收入阶层内部变动;同时,受教育程度较高的个体收入不易向下流动,城市个体尤为显著。因此,在制定收入分配、教育政策时对低收入群体进行扶持,将有利于促进合理的收入流动进而缩小收入分配差距。

Using the data from China Healthy and Nutrition Survey （1989 -2006）, this paper measures income mobility from different views, and studies its effects on social welfare, then decomposes the income mobility from different income groups, finally analyzes the relationship between individual characteristics and income mobility. The results show： Firstly, the mobility in urban and rural goes down after a period of rising. As the income distribution gap is deep in China, the decreasing of income mobility could deepen the existing income structure so that form the Matthew effect the poor will be poorer, the rich will be richer. So the income mobility doesn＇t improve social welfare. Secondly, although the low- income group contributes most to the global income mobility, most of them move among the low-income group. Thirdly, people who have higher education level have less possibility of down mobility, especially for urban people. As a result, it is necessary to support the low-income group when making policies such as education and income distribution, so that the reasonable income mobility and less income distribution gap can be reached.