Where next for China?: Rising inequalities in health and wealth are biggest challenge

doi:10.1136/bmj.333.7566.499

BMJ 2006;333:499 (2 September), doi:10.1136/bmj.333.7566.499

Letter

Where next for China?

Rising inequalities in health and wealth are biggest challenge

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—I write with reference to the editorial by Liu.¹Life expectancy in China doubled from 35 to 71 years between1949 and 2001.² China's human development index has been risingsteadily, and it ranked 85th among countries with an index of0.755 in 2003.² According to China's human development report,the national Gini coefficient for income distribution rose to0.45 in 2002 from 0.3 in 1982.² The average income of the highestincome tenth is 11 times that of the lowest tenth?²

Disparities in health indicators between urban and rural areasare widening. Life expectancy is 75.2 years for urban residentsand 69.6 for rural residents.² The human development index is0.816 in urban areas and 0.685 in rural areas. Rural infantmortality at 34% and maternal mortality at 61.9 per 100 000births are nearly double that in urban areas (14% and 33.1/100000, respectively). Rural areas . . . [Full text of this article]

Sonal Singh, instructor in medicine

Department of Medicine, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC 27157, USA sosingh@wfubmc.edu