Research On The Statistical Measurement Of Residents’ Income Redistribution Effect Of Fiscal Policy In China

China has historically completed the arduous task of eliminating absolute poverty,and the main social contradiction has been transformed into the contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing need for a better life.Alleviating income inequality and relative poverty,as well as promoting common prosperity for all people are currently one of the main tasks of the Party and the State of China at present.Fiscal policy plays an important role in regulating income distribution,and the Chinese government has always attached importance to the reform and improvement of the fiscal redistribution regulation system.At the 10 th meeting of the Central Financial and Economic Commission in 2021,it was stressed that we should remain committed to the people-centered philosophy of development,promote common prosperity in high-quality development,correctly deal with the relationship between efficiency and equity,increase the regulation and precision of tax,social security,and transfer payments.In this context,it is necessary to take a comprehensive look at the role of China’s fiscal policy in improving income inequality,combating relative poverty,and promoting common prosperity.Based on the theories related to fiscal policy and income redistribution of residents,this paper comprehensively examines the static effect measurement indicators of income redistribution and the dynamic effect measurement indicators of income redistribution,specifically discusses and evaluates the effects of fiscal policy on income inequality,relative poverty and common prosperity using CHFS micro household survey data from2011 to 2019,and constructs different policy scenarios to simulate and analyze the redistribution effect of fiscal policy on residents’ income.The details are as follows:First,it comprehensively measures the mitigation effect of fiscal policy on income inequality based on the static index of the Gini coefficient.The results show that the total effect of China’s fiscal policy on reducing income inequality continues to expand,causing the Gini coefficient of market income to fall by 14.36%-20.65% from2011-2019,which mainly stems from the rise of the vertical equity effect and the weak decline of the negative horizontal equity effect.Specifically,the equity effect of pension insurance welfare is the largest,reducing the income Gini coefficient by 5.65%-11.30%,followed by individual income tax,public education services,and other policies have limited contributions to equity effect.2011-2019,most fiscal policies have an increasing trend to alleviate income inequality,while the indirect tax has a weakening trend to worsen inequality.From the perspective of heterogeneity,the alleviation effect of fiscal policy on income inequality is characterized by urban>rural,eastern>western>central,and female>male.At the same time,the fiscal policy also reduces income inequality between regions and genders,but the effect of reducing the income gap between urban and rural areas is limited,and the difference between urban and rural systems of pension benefits and public services is the main reason.Second,it comprehensively measures the poverty reduction effect of fiscal policy based on the FGT poverty index static indicator.The results show that fiscal policy has alleviated relative poverty,reducing relative poverty incidence by 10.30%-17.25% from2011 to 2019,and the fiscal poverty reduction effect has expanded significantly after2017.Among them,the "poor-depriving" effect of taxation tends to weaken,while the "poor-relieving" effect of social welfare tends to strengthen.Compared with other social welfare,social insurance benefits have a relatively important role in alleviating relative poverty and its contribution to poverty reduction is on the rise.The increase in the overall level of fiscal gains in China is mainly due to the increase in the level of fiscal gains from social insurance benefits and social assistance policies,but the phenomenon of fiscal impoverishment can not be ignored,especially the deepening of poverty caused by indirect taxes and social security contributions.From the perspective of heterogeneity,the poverty reduction effect of fiscal policy is characterized by urban>rural,central and western>eastern,and female>male.Social assistance policies and public services better benefit the regions and groups with lower incomes,and the breadth and depth of the fiscal gains to the poor continue to increase.The per capita value of fiscal gains of pension insurance welfare in urban and eastern regions is higher,and the poverty reduction effect is relatively prominent.Third,based on the dynamic indicators of SP index(shared prosperity)and SPP index(shared prosperity premium),the impact effect of fiscal policy on common prosperity is measured comprehensively from the perspective of income growth of low-income groups.The results show that,on the premise of ensuring that the SP index does not decline,the greater the relative overall decrease of the direct tax burden rate and social security contribution rate of the L40 group,the greater the relative overall increase of social welfare rate,and the greater the relative decrease of the indirect tax burden rate(relative to the change of its consumption rate)than the overall decrease,the easier it is to improve the SPP index.The empirical results show that the impact of fiscal policy on common prosperity in China is characterized by stages and a positive trend,with the fiscal policy system contributing to the improvement of the SP and SPP indices in 2017-2019.Among them,the cash social welfare is manifested in promoting common prosperity in three stages(except 2015-2017),the direct tax(fee)only promotes common prosperity during 2017-2019,the indirect tax promotes common prosperity in three stages(except 2013-2015),and the degree of the hindrance of public services to common prosperity continues to decline.From the perspective of heterogeneity,the increase of fiscal policy on SP and SPP indexes from 2017-2019 shows the characteristics of urban>rural,eastern>western>central,and female>male.Fourthly,we make a scenario simulation analysis on the adjustment of fiscal policy and predict the consequences of a policy change on the fiscal redistribution effect.The results show that the increase of special deduction of personal income tax for infant care under 3 years old and the increase of the relative scale of property tax will help to expand the equity effect of direct tax and promote common prosperity.Lowering the VAT rate for people’s livelihood will help reduce the indirect tax burden on residents and weaken the deterioration of indirect tax on income inequality and relative poverty.The redistribution effect of cash social welfare will be greatly enhanced by setting up special poverty pensions,unifying medical insurance reimbursement treatment in various regions,increasing the reimbursement amount for relatively poor groups,and increasing the coverage of social assistance policy and subsidies.Increasing government investment in unit public services in rural areas or underdeveloped cities will help reduce the hindrance of public services to common prosperity.After considering all fiscal policy adjustments,the equity effect of China’s fiscal policy will increase by2.35%,the poverty reduction effect by 3.12%,and the SP and SPP will increase by7.91% and 5.19% respectively.The main innovations of this paper lie in the following points.Different from the previous studies that measure the redistribution effect of a certain type of fiscal policy from a single perspective,this paper,from a holistic perspective,integrates various fiscal policy tools at the revenue and expenditure ends into a unified analysis framework,and makes a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the residents’ income redistribution effect of fiscal policy and its dynamic changes.This paper expands the evaluation index of the income redistribution effect,comprehensively examines the static and dynamic indicators,and subdivides the income redistribution effect into three levels: the alleviating effect of income inequality,the poverty reduction effect,and the impact effect of common prosperity.It extends the research scope of income distribution,opens up the research perspective of common prosperity,and enriches empirical research on the impact of fiscal policy on shared prosperity.Considering the regional scale and the group scale,the research on the redistribution effect of residents’ income of fiscal policy has been enriched and refined from the perspective of heterogeneity,which is conducive to the fine adjustment of the fiscal redistribution policy.Constructing a variety of policy scenarios to simulate the fiscal redistribution effect,provides a positive reference for the adjustment of fiscal redistribution policy.