China Development Index (2019) releases improvement of living standard

China research and data center of Renmin University of China released China Development Index (2019) to the public on 15th. The results show that China's overall development index is growing steadily, and the improvement of living standards is the main driving factor. In the total index, Beijing and Shanghai are in the top two, Tianjin, Zhejiang and Jiangsu are in the second echelon; the total index scores of Tibet, Yunnan, Gansu, Guizhou and other western provinces are significantly lower than other provinces; the total index of 15 provinces exceeds the national total index, and the total index distribution of 31 provinces is relatively balanced. Among the four sub indexes, the sub indexes of health, education, living standards and social environment continued to improve, and the effect of investment in people's livelihood and infrastructure construction was obvious. The score of living standard index is the highest, but the score of living standard index is not balanced. There are great differences in social environment index, only 10 provinces exceed the national level, and the regional differences in economic development are still large.

Peng Fei, deputy director of China Survey and data center of Renmin University of China, said that stable growth and people's livelihood are the main themes of China's development at the current stage. The living standard index is the main driving force for the growth of the total index. The growth rate of rural residents' per capita net income index exceeds the growth rate of per capita GDP, which becomes the most important driving factor for the total index. In addition, the consumption expenditure of urban residents continued to increase, and the Engel coefficient of urban residents reflecting the quality of life continued to decline, indicating the continuous improvement of the quality of life of urban residents. On the other hand, the proportion of urban residents' housing consumption is on the rise, which reflects that the proportion of residents' housing consumption continues to increase in the rapid development of urbanization, and the rigid cost of living is rising. This is the 14th time that the center has released index research results. Since 2012, the organizers have increased the results of the annual survey of China's development confidence. The development confidence survey in 2019 found that the respondents gave a high score of 88.6 on China's future development confidence, which is the highest value in the eight years since the survey. In terms of education confidence and social environment confidence, this year is the first time that the survey has broken the 70 mark mark in eight years. People scored 81.9 on the cost of living, and generally believed that the cost of living such as clothing, food, housing and transportation was high. While the cost of living is constantly increasing, the confidence of the people in improving their living standards in the future has exceeded 82 points for the first time. The top three concerns listed by the interviewees are medical treatment, children's education, growth and development, and housing.