Research On The Impact Of Digital Inclusive Finance On Urban-Rural Income Gap

The problem of urban-rural income gap has always been a prominent contradiction in Chinese economic and social development.Most of the causes of Chinese overall income inequality can be explained by the uneven urban-rural income distribution.Chinese unique urban-rural dual structure has led to the uneven development of Chinese urban and rural economy,and the concentration of financial resources in urban areas has exacerbated the imbalance in the development of urban and rural economies,thereby widening the income gap between urban and rural residents.The Fourth Plenary Session of the Nineteenth Central Committee of the Party proposed to improve the modern financial system with high adaptability,competitiveness and inclusiveness.In recent years,although Chinese inclusive finance has developed rapidly and achieved good results,the traditional inclusive finance development model still faces a series of global problems such as poor business sustainability,difficulty in matching supply and demand,and difficulty in getting through the “last mile”.The emergence and popularization of inclusive finance provides an important source of power and growth point for the development of inclusive finance.However,due to the fact that China has not developed digital inclusive finance for a long time,and the corresponding regulatory system is not yet perfect,in practical applications,if it can increase the overall income level of people in rural areas and achieve inclusive economic growth,thereby coordinating urban and rural balance Developing and narrowing the urban-rural income gap is an issue worth studying.This paper takes 31 provinces,municipalities and autonomous regions in the country as the research object,uses the digital inclusive financial index 2011-2018 compiled by the Peking University Digital Finance Research Center as the core explanatory variable,and uses the Theil index as the explained variable to construct the panel model.At the same time,six control variables of urbanization development level,industrial structure,degree of opening to the outside world,fiscal expenditure,fiscal expenditure on agricultural support and economic development level are introduced.This article first sorts out the relevant research about digital inclusive finance and the urban-rural income gap at domestic and abroad,summarizes the relevant theories,on this basis,analyzes the mechanism of the impact of digital inclusive finance on the urban-rural income gap,and puts forward corresponding research hypotheses.H1: Digital inclusive finance can narrow the urban-rural income gap.H2: There is a threshold for the impact of digital inclusive finance on the urban-rural income gap.H3: There is a spatial correlation between the relationship between digital inclusive finance and the urban-rural income gap.Secondly,to verify the research hypothesis,the empirical analysis process is divided into three parts.This paper first builds a fixed-effect panel regression model at the national level as a benchmark model,and uses the panel step-by-step regression method for analysis.Then,it divides the samples into three regions: East,Central,and West Analysis.Secondly,a panel threshold regression model is constructed using the digital inclusive financial index as the threshold variable to verify the threshold effect of digital inclusive finance on the urban-rural income gap.Finally,the spatial autocorrelation is investigated by calculating the Moran index and the Gilley index,and constructs a spatial Durbin model SDM for empirical analysis and effect decomposition of the results.The research shows that:(1)The development level of digital inclusive finance shows regional differences,in which the development level in the east is the highest,that in the middle is the second,and that in the west is the worst.(2)Analyze the current situation of Chinese urban-rural income gap from the national and provincial levels,and compare it with the development of digital inclusive finance,and find that the lower the level of digital inclusive finance development,the greater the urban-rural income gap.(3)In the country and the eastern,central and western regions,digital inclusive finance can effectively converge the urban-rural income gap,and the convergence effect in the central and western regions are more significant.(4)There is a single threshold for digital inclusive finance across the country,and the development of digital inclusive finance in most provinces in China has exceeded this threshold,which can effectively promote the narrowing of the urban-rural income gap.(5)There is a space spillover effect of digital inclusive finance on the convergence of the urban-rural income gap,and the spillover effect is greater than the direct effect.Finally,this article puts forward relevant policy recommendations on how to better develop digital inclusive finance to narrow the urban-rural income gap.