An Empirical Analysis of Income Inequality between a Minority and the Majority in Urban China: The Case of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region

Based on the urban survey data of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in 2006, this paper studies the impact of ethnic characteristics on the income determination mechanism in the same economic region. Using the decomposition methods of Blinder and Oaxaca, Fields, and Morduch and Sicular, we analyze income gap between employed Hui and Han as well as income inequality within the two ethnic groups. The main conclusions are, first, that there is almost no income gap between Han and Hui in Ningxia. But different ethnic characteristics have effects on the income determination mechanism. Ethnic factors such as religion and social capital have no obvious effect on the income determination.