Is the spatial distribution of China's population excessively unequal?: A cross-country comparison

Abstract

In this study, I test whether the spatial inequality of China's population distribution deviates upward from that of other countries when controlling for a set of socioeconomic variables. For the purpose of this hypothesis testing, I estimate a fixed effects model, and interpret region-specific fixed effects as a systemic bias in spatial distribution of population. Primary data for analysis (panel data for 65 countries) is 0.25°×0.25° global population grids for five years (1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, and 2010). I estimate the grids for China from China's official census data and county-level statistics, while for other countries I directly use the grids excerpted from the Gridded Population of the World version 3 (GPWv3) dataset. I consider two measures of spatial inequality of population distribution. One is the spatial Gini coefficient, measuring spatial inequality across cities; the other is Moran's I index, measuring spatial inequality across clusters of cities. My preliminary analysis shows that the spatial Gini coefficient for China is not biased upward, while Moran's I index is. In other words, the distribution of China's population is not excessively unequal at the grid cell level, but those grid cells with high population counts tend to be highly agglomerated, compared with other countries. This results suggests that the spatial inequality of China's population distribution is more obvious at the regional level than at the city (or county) level.