Spatiality of regional inequality in China
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Date
2016
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AESOP
Abstract
While poverty rates have declined globally, inequality seems getting worse, intensified by the latest global financial crisis. Poverty reduction in many rural areas has been accompanied by the slower reduction of poverty in cities, a phenomenon known as urbanization of poverty. Spatial inequality is also large in many cities and countries in Asia. Consequently, equity has become a top sustainable development goal of the UN's post-2015 development agenda. The focus of the war on poverty has been shifted towards the war on inequality. Theories of regional inequality are typically divided among convergence, divergence and cyclical schools. While neoclassical convergence schools maintain that free mobility of capital and labor tends to reduce regional inequality over time, divergence schools argue for agglomeration and cumulative causation effects of growth. Empirically, findings on regional inequality are often inconclusive and scholars have found many cases a lack of convergence. It has been criticized that conventional convergence theories are often devoid of space and time, and are especially weak in accounting for regional inequality in developing counties. The recent heightened attention on inequality requires more research on spatial inequality. It is also time to rethink strategies and policies to reduce spatial inequality.
Description
Proceedings of the IV World Planning Schools Congress, July 3-8th, 2016 : Global crisis, planning and challenges to spatial justice in the north and in the south
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