Li Shi is China's leading specialist on inequality and poverty in China. He has served as the acting director of the China Institute of Income Distribution at Beijing Normal University since 2011. His numerous published works include Inequality and Public Policy in China with Björn Gustafsson and Terry Sicular (Cambridge University Press, 2008), Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty in Urban China with Hiroshi Sato (2003) and numerous articles in Chinese and Western scholarly journals. He has won many academic prizes, including the Sun Yefang Prize for Economic Science (1994 and 2011) and the Zhang Peigang Prize for Development Economics (2010).

Hiroshi Sato has published many works on topics related to development economics and inequality in China and elsewhere. He is co-editor of Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty in Urban China (2003), author of The Growth of Market Relations in Post-Reform Rural China (2003) and has contributed to numerous works including Inequality and Public Policy in China. He received the IDE Prize for Research on Developing Economies in 2004 for his Japanese book Shotoku Kakusa to Hinkon (Income Inequality and Poverty, 2003).

Terry Sicular is a leading North American specialist on the Chinese economy and has written extensively on inequality, poverty, the labor market and the rural economy in China. She is a co-editor of and contributor to Inequality and Public Policy in China. Her major works have appeared in the Review of Income and Wealth, the Journal of Development Economics and the Economic Journal. She is a recipient of the Zhang Peigang Prize for Development Economics (2010) and the Sun Yefang Prize for Economic Science (2011).

This book, a sequel to Inequality and Public Policy in China (2008), examines the evolution of inequality in China from 2002 to 2007, a period when the new "harmonious society" development strategy was adopted under Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao. It fills a gap in knowledge about the outcomes of this development strategy for equity and inequality. Drawing on original information collected from the recent two waves of nationwide household surveys conducted by the China Household Income Project, this book provides a detailed overview of recent trends in income inequality and cutting-edge analysis of key factors underlying such trends. Topics covered include inequality in education, changes in homeownership and the distribution of housing wealth, the evolution of the migrant labor market, disparities between public and non-public sectors, patterns of work and non-work, gender and ethnic gaps, and the impacts of public policies such as reforms in taxation and social welfare programs.