Statistic Research On Income Gap Between Rural And Urban Residents In Zhejiang

The problem of income distribution is an old topic in sociological and economic research. In recent years, with China's system reform, especially the deepening reform in income distribution field, the living standards of both urban and rural residents have been greatly improved. At the same time, the income gap has been continually widened with the changes of wealth owned in different areas, different classes and different residents. Among those, the income gap between the urban and rural residents is the most obvious. At the present time, China is among the few countries that the income ratio of urban-rural is above 3. The existence of income gap can unleash people's subjective imitative, however, if the income gap is too wide or continually widening, the impact to society and economic growth is apparent, and it is also in disagreement with the "harmonious" situation which our party and government has promoted. So, Examining the present state of income gap between rural and urban people, Understanding the reason why income gap exist and how the income gap affects is great importance to the stable growth of economics and society and the construction of a harmonious society.This paper has mainly studied on the problem of income gap between rural and urban residents in Zhejiang province. After elaborating the research background, significance and review of interrelated topics both domestic and abroad, the concepts of income distribution,the measure of income gap and so on ,The paper deeply studied the situation of income gap of urban-rural in Zhejiang province, the micro factors influencing the family income of both urban and rural areas, the reason why the income gap exists and how the income gap affected. Finally, some suggestions for reducing the income gap were put forward.This paper can be divided into eight chapters, the former two chapters has mainly discussed some theoretic problems, such as the background, the significance and the current research state of the interrelated problems, and the concepts of income gap between the urban and the rural areas, the index of measurement etc. The third chapter has made a description of the situation of income gap in Zhejiang province; the forth chapter has discussed the structure of income source and those micro factors that has impact on family income; the fifth chapter has made theoretic explanation and model analysis of the form of income gap between the urban and the rural areas; the sixth chapter has discussed the developing course and influence of income gap in Zhejiang, the seventh chapter has put forward some suggestions for decreasing the income gap, the end is the conclusion and the prospect.There are three innovations in this paper: the first is making a thorough and systematic corroboration of the income gap between the urban and rural residents in Zhejiang province. ,a lot of work has been made in the choosing of indexes, the processing of data including the adjustment of history data and dynamic comparison, those work has greatly upgraded the authenticity and reliability. The second innovation is that during the writing of this paper, I have organized two sample surveys which are about the income of Zhejiang residents, the questionnaires that received are about 500.I have attained some illumination from the questionnaire and interview. I have constructed an urban-rural income function by the data sorted from the second sample survey and simulated the source of family income and influencing factors by introducing dummy variable, the explanation is comparably reasonable. The third innovation is that when analyzing the reason of the formation of income gap between the urban and the rural areas, this paper has adopted principal components analysis that integrates the 22 statistical indexes which reflecting the development and duality. The principal component regression not only can overcome the multicollinearity in multivariable analysis but also can tell the influencing direction or even the degree of most variables to the income gap between the urban-rural areas. Besides, the analysis of explaining the inverted -U shape of income gap among every area in Zhejiang by panel data has some originality to some extent.The main findings of the study are that:1. The income gap of Zhejiang has appeared the trend of dynamic widening from the 1980s. No matter we employ the gini coefficient, the income range, the income condition index, KUZNETS index or the income ratio of the urban-rural, the income gap of Zhejiang is continually widening. Among that, the interior income gap in the rural areas is more serious than that in the urban area. The income gap between the urban and the rural area has come through three phrases: the comparably stable, the rising in fluctuation and continually widening.2. The income gap in Zhejiang is far below the average level of the whole country, however it is not low when compared with the like areas in the world, or even with developed areas in our own country such as Jiangsu. The point deserved our attention is that the number of counties that the income ratio is above 3 has also reached 11. The income gap of the urban-rural area of the northwestern Zhejiang is significantly higher than that of the northeastern Zhejiang. If the gap in consumption, education, culture and service are considered, the income gap between the urban-rural areas is also apparent, the worse is that the gap shows the trend of widening, if enough attention were not paid to the problem and necessary measures were not adopted, the development of society and economic growth would suffer unfavorable attack.3. The income of rural families in Zhejiang has significant relations with the area where the family is, the number of farming fixed-asset, the education level of the principal labor force. The income of those rural families in the plane, island and suburbs is obviously higher than that of those families in mountain area. Peasants who have been engaged in work other than farming have more income than those peasants who have been engaged in fanning or doing work for others. The increase of farming labor forces or farming land cannot obviously increase the family income.4. The income of urban family has significant correlations with the place of the family, the number of manpower, the education level, and profession of the principle labor force. For example, the income superiority of the prefecture-level city is the most obvious; the income of those family in the provincial capital and county is also obviously superior that of those family in small town. Those professionals in monopoly industry, realty business and business professions maybe have higher income; according to the profession, businessmen, civil servants and tecnicists have comparably high income, however, the position and the professional title has no significant influence on income.5. The occurrence of income gap between the urban-rural areas not only has business with the economic law but also with the economic layout and the duality of our country. Specific analysis shows that such duality as the comparable labor capacity of agriculture is low, the ratio of added value of agriculture to GDP is low, the investment to countryside is far low than that to the city have directly lead to the income gap between the urban-rural area, however, the development of economic, the rising of industrialization, and the development of the third industry has aggravated the income gap between the urban-rural areas to some extent. The increasing of the rate of urban unemployment, the urbanization, and the gap between the educational investments in the urban-rural areas has indirectly widened the income gap in the urban-rural areas. On the other hand, the development of the private economic ,the degree of opening system, the support to the agriculture from government can significantly decrease the income gap of urban-rural residents.6. The change of the income gap between the urban-rural areas in Zhenjiang is in accordance with the hypothesis of the inverted-U shape of KUZNETS. As far as every area is concerned, the degree of the influence of economic growth to income gap of those comparably developed areas such as Hangzhou, Ningbo is smaller than that of those undeveloped areas. On the whole, the income gap of most of the areas of Zhejiang has reached the turning point in 2003 or 2004. It can be said that with the development of the economic growth, the income gap in most areas will continually decreased. But the income gap in some areas such as Shaoxing, Jinhua, Taizhou maybe continually widen, to which we should pay great attention.7. From the point of the theory, the widening of the income gap between the urban-rural areas has some downside influence to the construction of harmonious society, the provocation of demand, and the construction of the rural area. But the empirical research shows that the income gap between the urban-rural areas in Zhejiang has positive effect on the economic growth. The reason maybe is that there exist quite a lot of rich residents in Zhejiang. Their investments and demands of luxury goods provoke the rise of economic growth.8. Although the income gap between the urban-rural area has some positive impact on the economic growth, it doesn't mean that we can ignore the existence and continual widening of income gap between the urban and rural areas, on the contrary, if we let the income gap continually widen, it would bring uncertainty to and threaten the continual and stable development of the whole country, so we have to adopt effective measures to promote the stable rise of economic growth and the stability of the whole society.