[Biweekly Symposium] No. 584: The Income Allocation Efficiency of Social Security Expenditure. 

Lecturer: YUE Ximing

Host: QIN Sidao

Commentators: WANG Yongjun, YU Xianghua

Professor YUE Ximing firstly stressed that it was very difficult to do research in income distribution, even though with 20 years of research experience. He thought different people had various approaches: from the labour economics point of view, education becomes the biggest factor; while from the financial policy perspective, there is a lack of financial policy implications for this research. 

The income gap is the pure gap between different social groups in terms of income. The Gini Coefficient is used to measure this inequality in income, however, it can be easily overestimated or underestimated. 

He emphasized that the closing of the income gap relates the redistribution policy of the government. However, there is no governance regarding this income inequality. Nor is there governance in eliminating corruption, or dealing with the high revenue of monopolistic industries. Professor YUE also pointed out that despite the income redistribution measures taken by the government, the gap is not closing thanks to the low expenditure on social security. And there is also massive inequality in the expenditure of social security, which has been concentrating on certain social groups, resulting bigger inequality.

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