BEIJING (AFP) -- Chinese citizens' sense of security has fallen over the past three years as the country's yawning wealth gap widens further, state media said.

Referring to a survey carried out by the Beijing-based Horizonkey, a private polling company, the China Youth Daily said Chinese people were feeling less secure as the income gap between cities and rural areas hits danger levels.

"Uneven social development, particularly the rich-poor gap between cities and villages, has led to all sorts of social conflicts," the report quoted Professor Wang Taiyuan at the People's Public Security University as saying. "This imbalance has weighed on members of the public's psychological burden."

The survey, released last month, interviewed 4,128 residents aged between 18 and 60 in eight cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, and seven rural towns and villages, according to Horizonkey's website.

On a scale of five with one indicating least secure and five indicating most secure, the level of the sense of social security among interviewees fell from 3.66 in 2003 to 3.62 in 2004, and then to 3.53 in 2005. China's National Development and Reform Commission said this month that the income gap between rich and poor in China's cities had reached an "alarming and unreasonable level."

The poorest 20 percent of the urban population get only 2.75 percent of the total urban income, the key economic planner said in a report.

Last year, the National Bureau of Statistics said that 10 percent of the nation's richest people enjoyed 45 percent of the country's wealth while the poorest 10 percent had only 1.4 percent.