Forecasting regional income inequality in China

In this study, the mathematical models with Gini coefficients and variation coefficients are used to study the time-series properties of China's regional income differences. The result shows that from 1952 to 1978 the differences increase; from 1978 to the beginning of 1990s decrease; and from the beginning of 1990s to 1995 increase a little. In addition, the multi-level autoregressive models with time-varying parameters are used to predict the differences of China's regional per capita income from 1996 to 2000. The per capita income levels of various regions in China have also been forecasted by using adaptive control algorithms to depict an acceptable level of income inequality for policy making. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.