Multiple Deprivations in Urban China: An Analysis of Individual Survey Data

Abstract

In the western economies, widening inequalities in income and wealth, cuts in public expenditure, the selective targeting of resources and an emphasis on economic competitiveness have raised considerable concerns about deprivation. Deprivation has emerged as an important research theme in the fields of urban social geography and urban studies. Researchers emphasize the multidimensional aspects of deprivation. The concept of deprivation originated in the UK in the late 1960s, where it emerged as a means of providing a framework for examining a broad array of social and economic disadvantages (Norris, 1979). Townsend (1993, p. 79) defines deprivation as a ‘state of observable and demonstrable disadvantage relative to the local community or the wider society to which an individual, family or group belongs’. It refers to specific conditions such as the lack of clothing, housing, household facilities, education and social activities, and is thus distinguished from poverty. Deprivation may present in various aspects of disadvantage, and is thus referred to as ‘multiple deprivations’. The index of multiple deprivations (IMD) is used to give an aggregated measurement of the deprivation status of small areas, used to examine the geography of deprivation (Knox and Pinch, 2000).