The measurement, changes, and decomposition of the multidimensional inequality of rural and urban households

It is of great significance to analyze the inequality from a multidimensional perspective in the context of major social contradiction changes and rural revitalization in China. Based on the Chinese Household Income Project data and applying the Araar index and the multidimensional Gini index, this paper seeks to measure the multidimensional inequality of rural and urban households and to decompose the multidimensional inequality to explore the contributions of different dimensions. Results show that the multidimensional inequality indices of all households in 2007 and 2013 were 0.215 8 and 0.208 8, respectively. However, the multidimensional inequality index of rural households rose from 0.173 9 to 0.185 3, and the multidimensional inequality index of urban households rose from 0.172 3 to 0.178 7. The multidimensional inequality indices of rural households in 2007 and 2013 were higher than those of urban households. According to the decomposition of multidimensional inequality, the consumption dimension made the largest contribution to the multidimensional inequality in 2007 and 2013 reached 68.69% and 63.24%, respectively; while the health dimension made the lowest contribution, with only 7.51% and 10.45%, respectively. There were same trends of changes in urban households and rural households. Therefore, policymakers should pay more attention to the changes of the multidimensional inequality of rural and urban households from the multidimensional perspective. In addition, policymakers should focus on the multidimensional inequality of rural households and decrease the contributions of consumption and education.