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Explores recent trends in developing and transitional economies in rural–urban, rural, and urban inequality of income and poverty risk, and the offsetting trends in inequality hypothesis (OTI), which claims that, underlying the overall inequality trend, there has been a tendency for rising intrasectoral inequality to be offset by falling rural–urban inequality. The data reviewed in the chapter refute OTI with the possible, partial exception of Latin America: first, the data show no overall tendency for within‐country rural–urban inequality to increase or decrease since the 1980s; second, while modest national and regional tendencies exist, they do not, on the whole, offset trends in overall inequality. Urban–rural ratios of both mean consumption and poverty risk have commonly either risen or fallen alongside total inequality, or even been trendless. Changing urban–rural ratios of poverty or per‐person consumption need not imply changing urban bias; they may be caused by exogenous changes in relative returns to urban activities, plus entry or exit barriers, although rural‐urban inequality trends in ‘human development’ indicators (literacy, longevity, etc.) do suggest rising urban bias. The chapter is arranged in three sections: Introduction and Summary; Rural–Urban and Intrasectoral Contributions to Changes in the Overall Inequality of Consumption or Income—an econometric analysis; and Changing Rural–Urban Poverty Ratios and ‘Urban Bias’.

This is the first of five country case studies on income inequality, and looks at the case of India. Discusses the differences between the approach taken to liberalization in India (the Delhi Consensus) and the standard approach (the Washington Consensus); the Delhi Consensus has emphasized the slow liberalization of trade and very gradual privatization, and has avoided capital account liberalization. This prudent approach has sidestepped major shocks, and the changes in inequality consequent upon these reforms have been relatively modest, although rural inequality has risen at a slower pace than have urban and overall inequality. The rise in inequality is attributed to three factors: a shift in earnings from labour to capital income; the rapid growth of the services sector, particularly the FIRE sector (banking, financial institutions, insurance, and real estate), with a consequent explosion in demand for skilled workers; and a drop in the rate of labour absorption during the reform period, associated with an increase in regional inequality, especially in the incidence of rural poverty. The chapter has five sections: Introduction: Salient Economic Performance Aspects and Recent Policy Reforms—an outline of the economic performance of the Indian economy since the 1950s, with a brief overview of the economic reforms initiated; Trends in Inequality and Poverty in India—an analysis trends in aggregate inequality and poverty, with suggested explanations; Poverty and Inequality at the State Level—an outline of the major characteristics of poverty and inequality at the level of individual Indian states; and Tentative Conclusions.

This chapter describes the rural-to-urban migration history of four men, weaving their stories through the grand narrative of China’s economic modernization and the role of the state in regulating migration flows through its hukou (household registration) system and other policies. By locating personal experiences within an institutional context, this chapter provides the historical and structural background for analyzing how migration shapes family life, looking at the macro-structural context of rural-urban inequality, as well as at how state and capital collude in the exploitation and marginalization of migrants in post-socialist China.