Income inequality has been a growing concern since Global Financial Crisis. But how do regional institutions contribute to the debate on income equality? ASEAN’s normative framework is underpinned by the principle of non-interference while ASEAN has a mandate to establish an equitable economic community post 2015. This study examines if regional income inequality is considered a regional problem, and if so, is the concern significant enough to overcome the principle of non-interference allowing ASEAN to play a greater role in policy formation. ...

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are a large and rapidly-growing problem in China and other middle-income countries. Clinical treatment of NCDs is long-term and expensive, so it may present particular problems for equality and horizontal equity (equal treatment for equal need) in access to health care, although little is known about this at present in low- and middle-income countries. To address this gap, and inform policy for a substantial proportion of the global population, we examined inequality and inequity in general health care utilization ...

This paper provides an overview of research on income inequality in China over the period of economic reform. It presents the results of two main sources of evidence on income inequality and, assisted by various decompositions, explains the reasons income inequality has increased rapidly and the Gini coefficient is now almost 0.5. This paper evaluates the degree of income inequality from the perspectives of people’s subjective well-being and government concerns. It poses the following question: has income inequality peaked? It also discusses the ...

The 10 states of Southeast Asia have combined to form the developing world’s most successful and durable regional grouping, the Association of Southeast Asian Na-tions, ASEAN. Economic integration among them is high and increasing. The ambi-tious ASEAN Economic Community is scheduled to take effect from December 2015, and should further accelerate this integration. But the socio-economic and institution-al disparities among them are also very large. This paper therefore asks the ques-tion, does it make sense to contemplate a ‘Southeast Asian ...

Population aging has significant economic and social costs, and this paper studies its impacts on inequality, both theoretically and empirically. First, we build a two-period overlapping-generation model with an uncertain lifetime and find that population aging has the overall effect of increasing income and consumption inequality within the society. For the empirical analysis, we use household data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey to assess the age effect on income and consumption inequality in the People’s Republic of China and confirm ...