The Gini coefficient structure and its application for the evaluation of regional balance development in China

The evaluation of balanced regional development should consider not only the economic and ecological benefits but also regional differences. A nongrouped Gini index is constructed based on a continuous distribution function to evaluate the regionally balanced development of the economy and the environment, and the applicability of the method is analyzed given the data characteristics. Combining the difference in the regional economic base and ecological carrying capacity, a multigroup overall Gini index (MGO-Gini) with regional spatial heterogeneity is further developed, along with its decomposition structure. This work evaluates and analyses the regional balance in China's development with regard to regional industrial output, energy consumption and pollution emissions from 2000 to 2015 using both the nongrouped and the MGO-Gini. The results show that ①the Gini index constructed in this paper can be well adapted to fat-tailed data, which is a typical feature of China's regional economic and ecological benefits data. ②The regionally balanced development of China does not obviously promote industrial output, whereas the regional balance of energy consumption shows the same upward trend when evaluated with both the nongrouped and the MGO-Gini from 2000 to 2015. In recent years, after a period of improvement, the regional balance of pollution emissions has experienced a downward trend. There is disparity in “cleaner production efficiency” between regions of China as well as an upward trend in this disparity in recent years. ③China's interregional balance has been enhanced in terms of energy consumption and pollution emissions considering regional spatial heterogeneity, whereas the balance of economic output has been further reduced. ④The balance in regional energy consumption plays a supporting role in balanced development among regions. The imbalance within developed areas is the main source of regional economic output and energy consumption imbalances, and the imbalance in developing areas is the main source of the regional pollution imbalance in China.