Abstract: The disparity of farmland conversion to regional economic growth exists in China. To analyze the origin and the tendency of the disparity, this paper employs the Gini coefficient, weighted variation coefficient and Theil index to measure the contribution of farmland conversion to local GDP in the three main regions of China with provincial data from 1989 to 2001. The Theil index has been decomposed for further studying the main origin of the disparity. The result shows that the disparity in each region is the main source of the disparity at national level. In addition, it is revealed that the contribution of east region is increasing gradually, while that of the middle part is decreasing, and the west region's contribution is increasing gradually before 1999, then decreasing. The result implies that the key point of government intervention in allocating farmland conversion quota is to improve allocation efficiency in each region, but not between regions,for the effective use of resources, and maintain and of an equitable environment for the economic development in the whole country.

Key words: farmland conversion, economic growth, Theil index