Wage gap narrows only slightly

The wage gap between rich and poor in China narrowed slightly in 2013, but there was still room for improvement, the National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday.

The country's Gini coefficient, a measure of the income gap on a scale of 0 to 1, was 0.473 in 2013, down from 0.474 in 2012 but still higher than the warning level of 0.4 set by the United Nations.

Bureau chief Ma Jiantang said the official Gini coefficient in China was "not very low," which had to be addressed through better allocation of resources and the acceleration of income distribution reform. But he rejected doubts over the figure's accuracy.