Measuring regional inequality of education in China: widening coast–inland gap or widening rural–urban gap?

Abstract This article measures education inequality between the coastal and inland provinces and compares it with rural–urban educational inequality in China, using Gini education coefficients and decomposition analysis. The main finding of the article is that disparities in access to education between rural and urban areas rather than between coastal and inland provinces are the major cause of educational inequality in China. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.