Education In Rural Areas And The Gap Between Rural And Urban Residents' Income

In recent years, the gap between the rural and urban residents' income is getting large. Some researches indicate that the average income ratio is increasing from 2.71 in 1995 to 3.11 in 2002. Considering the non-monetary factors such as medical, education and unemployment insurance, the income in urban areas perhaps is 4 or 5 times, even 6 times as it in rural areas. Many measures, such as tax reform, increasing the agricultural products price and so on, have been put into practice, and really make the rural residents' income increased, make their life richer and happier. But the big gap lying in the income-increasing ration of urban and rural areas decides that the difference between the incomes of urban and rural areas will get larger. So increasing farmers' income is far from enough to contract the gap. As the main method of the human capital investment, education decides labors' capacity and their quality as well the speed of their income increment directly. So education in rural areas is the base, leading and fatal industry for the sustainable development in such areas. Without doubt, developing education and enhancing the level of labor force in these areas is the important method to develop the rural economy, raise the farmers' income and contract the gap between the incomes in rural and urban areas. However, the rural education has many frauds, which limit the improvement of the farmers' capacity and the development of the rural economy. Based on the investigation on the spot and individual case interview, this paper analyses the frauds existing in the rural education, brings forward the countermeasures of solving these problems and developing the rural education. The creativeness of this paper comes from the reform proposals of rural teachers' training, the investment of the rural elementary education and the suggestion that professional techniques education should pay attention to the improvement of farmers' quality.