Multidimensional Development and Inequality in China. The effects of the reforms after Deng Xiaoping

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the development of China since the Nineties from a multidimensional perspective, considering also those aspects of wellbeing that the Chinese development strategy often sacrificed for the sake of GDP growth. This thesis provides an original contribution in the literature about Chinese economic and human development. Methodologies traditionally adopted to investigate the expansion and the distribution of income, are here applied to other interest variables (as education and nutrition) or to more comprehensive multidimensional indexes. The same construction of such indexes, according to methodologies recently introduced in the literature about composite measures of well-being, has an intrinsic value for the analysis of Chinese development. Moreover, we emphasize how the (multidimensional) benefits triggered by the reformers were distributed across the population. A particularly sensitive topic is indeed the development of the poor provinces in inner China and of vulnerable social groups, including women and rural dwellers, who were the “losers” of the reform process.