A Comparative Study Of The Differences Of The Urban And Rural Inhabitants' Income Discrepancy Between Different Provinces

After more than twenty years of China's reform of its economic system, great achievements have been reached in the economic development. And the income and life quality of the urban and rural inhabitants have been improved a lot. However, the income discrepancy between the urban and rural inhabitants is always widening. Therefore, how to recognize the income discrepancy between urban and rural inhabitants has become a problem we should carefully deal with.Based on the brief analysis of income discrepancy between the urban and rural inhabitants all over the country and the income discrepancy between different provinces, this thesis mainly focuses on the differences of the urban and rural inhabitants' income discrepancy between different provinces and the reasons that cause such differences. According to the conditions of the urban and rural inhabitants' income discrepancy of 31 provinces (including municipalities), such sort of differences can be divided into three types, which generally indicate the features in the spatial distribution.With the statistics of the urban and rural inhabitants' income from thirty-one provinces in China from 1978 to 2003, the use of the urban inhabitants' average disposable income and the rural inhabitants' average pure income as the income level for each of the two respectively, and the adoption of the Genii parameter, absolute discrepancy, relative discrepancy, etc., to evaluate the urban inhabitants' income discrepancy and rural inhabitants' income discrepancy between the different provinces,this thesis goes on to analyze the differences of the urban and rural inhabitants' incomediscrepancy between different provinces.This thesis has drawn the conclusion as follows:1) The income discrepancy of the rural inhabitants in different provinces and the income discrepancy of the urban inhabitants in different provinces are strikingly influenced by the geographical factors. The income level is decreasing from East-China to West-China, which conforms to our country's distribution of the economic development level. Moreover, the condition of the income discrepancy of the ruralinhabitants in different provinces is far more than that of the urban inhabitants in different provinces.2) The income discrepancy between the urban and rural inhabitants increases from east China to west China in the spatial distribution. And what is more, as time passes, such a situation in the spatial distribution tends to deteriorate.3) Moreover, there is also a cross-spatial phenomenon, the income discrepancy between the rural inhabitants in east China and the urban inhabitants in west China. With cities as the units for analysis, it has been discovered that such sort of cross-spatial phenomenon commonly exist in the income discrepancy between the rural areas in East China and the rural areas in West China.4) Through the analysis of the Theil parameter, it can be drawn that the general income discrepancy between the urban and rural areas in East china and Middle china is small than average income discrepancy of the whole country, while that of West China is bigger than the average. The income discrepancy between the urban and rural areas in a specific region constitute the major contradiction of the income discrepancy of our country, which can be clearly observed in the middle and west china.5) In order to find out the main factors that affect the spatial distribution of the income discrepancy between the urban and rural inhabitants, with the methods of recursive analysis and relevance analysis, this thesis analyzes it from three perspectives: the traffic conditions of a province, the economic development level, and the degree of market maturity. It has found that the differences in the average GDP, the density of the railway and high way, and the economic development level are the major factors affecting the difference in the urban and rural inhabitants' income discrepancy between provinces. In other words, the average GDP and the density of railway and highway in a province increase conversely with the income discrepancy between urban and rural areas. Therefore, in a sense, it is the differences of the economic development level and the traffic condition between different provinces that lead to the difference of the income discrepancy between different provinces in the spatial distribution.