The Transition Of Rural Population And The Convergence Of Dual Economic Structure

Dual economic structure is a unique structural feature of developing countries.As the largest developing country in the world,China's GDP ranks the second in the world after more than 40 years of sustained economic growth through reform and opening up.However,with the rapid growth of economic,the contrast of China's dual economic structure has not been weakened.Whether measured by per capital stock,relative labor productivity or per capital income level,China's economy is characterized by a typical dual economic structure.The gap between traditional agricultural sector and modern industrial sector is still significant,and there is no evidence of convergence in time series.Some indexes even show a trend of reverse transformation.These have led to a series of problems:Why the rapid growth of China's economy for more than 40 years is accompanied by the slow transformation of dual economic structure?What is the convergence mechanism of China's dual economic structure at present?How to understand the way and direction of dual economic structure transformation comprehensively and accurately?In fact,to study the convergence of the dual economic structure,we must focus on the agricultural sector and rural population.Different from the Lewis-Ranis-Fei model,which takes industrialization,urbanization and the non-agricultural transfer of agricultural surplus labor force as the goal and path of convergence of the dual economic structure,this paper holds that for China,the largest developing country in the world,Lewis-Ranis-Fei model only gives the necessary conditions for the convergence of dual economic structure,and the sustainable convergence of the dual economic structure requires the promotion of internal factors,that is,the internal factors of the continuous development of the traditional agricultural sector.Based on it,this paper takes the rural demographic transition(the process of rural population production from quantity preference to quality preference)in the process of industrialization into the convergence analysis of dual economic structure,and uses the endogenous growth theory to analyze the impact mechanism of rural demographic transition on the convergence of dual economic structure,and takes the rural demographic transition as a sufficient condition for the convergence of dual economic structure in the middle and later stages of industrialization.Firstly,this paper analyzes the conditions and mechanisms of the convergence of the dual economic structure.Secondly,it explores the convergence effect of the dual economic structure in rural demographic transition.Finally,it makes an empirical study on the relationship between the rural demographic transition and the convergence of the dual economic structure in advanced industrialized countries,developing countries and China.The main conclusions and innovations are as following.Firstly,The traditional demographic transition theory is expanded and enriched based on the transformation of rural population,which shows that the process of rural population production from quantity preference(high fertility rate)to quality preference(high human capital accumulation rate).The rural demographic transition from the perspective of population quantity and quality transformation completely breaks away from the traditional demographic transition research idea centered on the "Birth,Death and Natural Growth Rate"change.This paper discusses the demographic transition in rural China in the process of industrialization,from the perspective of the interdisciplinary of demography and economics,that is,the rural population production is changing from quantity preference(high fertility rate)to quality preference(high human capital accumulation rate)in China's vast rural areas,and the healthy development state of population production quality transformation has been basically formed in rural families in China.This phenomenon has been confirmed not only from the demographic transition process that developed countries have experienced,but also from the development facts that developing countries are experiencing.Secondly,this paper explores the impact of rural demographic transition on the convergence of dual economic structure,and explains the convergence of dual economic structure from the new perspective of demographic transition.In traditional convergence theory of dual economic structure,whether it is Lewis-Ranis-Fei's dual economic transformation theory,Schultz's agricultural modernization mechanism,and government driven mechanism,the traditional agricultural sector has always been regarded as a passive development sector lacking endogenous power.Under the framework of the traditional dual economic structure convergence theory,it is impossible to deduce the effective mechanism of dual economic convergence from the traditional agricultural sector without the promotion of industrialization and government driven policies,Therefore,it is not feasible to regard the agricultural sector,which plays the main role in economic development,as the passive development sector.There are few literatures can bring the quantitative and qualitative transformation of population into the dual economic structure analysis framework.This paper first introduces the quantitative and qualitative transformation of population production into the dual economic structure analysis framework,and emphasizes its endogenous,independent and lasting impact on the transformation of dual economy into unitary economy.This paper holds that after China's economy has entered the middle stage of industrialization,the impact of rural demographic transition on the convergence of dual economic structure depends on the continuous improvement of rural human capital in the process of continuous decline of rural fertility level.Thirdly,this paper systematically explains the mechanism of rural demographic transition on the convergence of dual economic structure based on the endogenous growth theory.With the continuous development of industrialization and urbanization,the mechanism of the transformation of rural population on the convergence of dual economic structure is mainly reflected in three aspects:firstly,the transformation of rural population will lead to the transformation of the factor structure of traditional agricultural sector,which is mainly based on the decline of rural labor force growth rate,the deepening of rural human capital level and the rural labor force.Secondly,the transformation of rural population will lead to the upgrading of the technical level of the traditional agricultural sector.Since technological progress is reflected in the change of the factor structure,the change of the agricultural sector factor structure means the continuous upgrading of the technical level of the agricultural sector.Thirdly,the transformation of the rural population will lead to the transformation of the organizational form of the agricultural sector,and the transformation of sector factor structure and the progress of technology level will inevitably lead to the continuous evolution of agricultural production organization form from traditional agricultural production organization to modern agricultural production organization.Finally,the transformation of rural population leads to the continuous improvement of labor productivity and per capita income of the agricultural sector through the influence of the transformation of the factor structure,the upgrading of technical level and the transformation of organizational form of the traditional agricultural sector,and finally promotes the convergence of the income level of the traditional agricultural sector and the modern sector.That is,the unitary transformation of the dual economic structure is completed,and the whole picture of dual economic structure and its transformation have been explained theoretically.Fourthly,this paper analyzes the impact of demographic transition in advanced industrialized countries,developing countries and China's rural population on the convergence of dual economic structure.Rural demographic transition,as the basic explanatory variable of the convergence of dual economic structure in the middle and late stage of industrialization,can be preliminarily verified by empirical investigation of the advanced industrialized countries,developing countries and China.It is found that the development experience of both advanced industrialized countries and China in the middle and late stage of industrialization indicates that the transformation of rural population production is the key factor leading to the unification of dual economy.The demographic transition in advanced industrialized countries has a significant negative impact on the convergence of the dual economic structure.With the continuous transformation of population production quality,the dual economic structure of developed countries tends to be unified.For the vast number of developing countries,especially the low-level developing countries,due to the lag of industrialization and urbanization,the rural demographic transition is still in the initial stage,and the convergence effect on the dual economic structure has not yet appeared,but the effect of rural demographic transition on the convergence of dual economic structure in high-level developing countries has been gradually highlighted.With China's industrialization into the middle and late period,the relationship between the intensity of rural demographic transition and the dual economic structure in different regions of China shows a typical difference,that is,the more developed the eastern region is,the higher the level of demographic transition intensity is,the smaller the binary contrast index is,while the more backward western region is just the opposite.Therefore,empirical research on the impact of rural demographic transition on the convergence of dual economic structure enriches the scope of empirical research on dual economic structure to a certain extent.