Prof. Donald J. Treiman: IAS Distinguished Lecture Series on Inequality and Poverty

On 29 October 2010, we were honored to have Prof. Donald J. Treiman giving us a public lecture on “The ‘Difference between Heaven and Earth’: Urban-rural Disparities in Health and Well-being in China” in IAS Distinguished Lecture Series on Inequality and Poverty. Prof. Treiman is one of the foremost scholars of cross-national comparative research in social stratification and social mobility and has been currently a Visiting Professor of the Division at Social Science, HKUST.

In the paper, using data from two national probability sample surveys in 1996 and 2008, Prof. Treiman described rural-urban disparities in health and well-being and examined whether, to what extent, and in what ways such inequalities have changed under the context of transition to a market economy in China. To be more specific, he identified three groups of adult individuals: (1) those with rural registration and rural residence at age 14, (2) those with rural registration and urban residence at age 14, and (3) those with urban registration at age 14 and contrasted various aspects of health and well-being between these three groups, such as years of schooling, number of words recognized, proportion of the labour force in agricultural and nonmanual jobs, height, access to amenities, perception of current living standard when compared with what it was 5 years ago, etc. His results showed that there has been “a rising tide lifts all boats”. That is, across-the-board improvement in almost all measured aspects of life in China has been observed, though the size of the rural-urban gap has remained relatively constant over the last few decades.


來自UCLA的著名社會學家Prof. Donald J. Treiman 在2010-2011上學期到科大社會科學部出任訪問教授 。在訪問期間，Prof. Treiman 除了主講Advanced Quantitative Analysis in Social Science 一門課外 ，他更在2010年10月29日出席科大高等研究院傑出學人講座 ，發表他其中一項中國研究的成果 。講座題目為 “個人健康與生活質素﹕中國城鄉之差別 ” 。

這項研究的目的在於探討過去幾十年間中國的迅速經濟發展是縮窄還是拉闊城鄉之間在個人健康和生活質素的不平等 。Prof. Treiman 比較了三個群體在個人健康和生活質素各方面的分別 。這三個群體包括﹕(1) 在14歲時住在農村中的農村户籍人士 ，(2) 在14歲時住在城市中的農村户籍人士 ，及 (3) 在14歲時住在城市中的城市户籍人士 。通過分析兩項全國性調查的數據 ，他發現了﹕在過去幾十年間 ，這三個群體在個人健康和生活質素各方面都得到改善 。但是 ，城鄉差距之程度維持不變 。