A Study On The Factors Affecting The Income Gap Between Urban And Rural Areas

The ultimate goal of social development is common prosperity,but while people’s living standards have greatly improved since the reform and opening up in China,there has been an increasing urban-rural income gap at the same time.In view of the urban-rural income gap,the different disciplines have different interpretations.In addition to the interpretation of traditional disciplines such as price scissors,urban and rural dual structure,human capital and household registration system,other factors that affect the urban-rural income gap can be found from the perspective of new economic geography.According to the relevant theories of New Economic Geography,this paper establishes the relative real wage model of urban laborers mainly responsible for industrial production and rural labors mainly responsible for the production of agricultural products,and finds that the factors affecting the income gap between urban and rural areas were population density,relative prices of industrial products and agricultural products,transportation costs and the size of the city,then put forward hypotheses that these factors were positively related to urban-rural income gap.In the empirical test,static panel regression analysis,dynamic panel regression analysis and spatial econometric analysis were carried out in the data of 13 prefecture-level cities in Jiangsu Province from 1999 to 2015.From the regression results of the three panel models,it was found that the population density,the relative prices of industrial products and agricultural products,and the scale of the city did have a significant positive correlation with the urban-rural income gap.In addition,the results of dynamic panel regression showed that the previous urban-rural income gap had a significant positive impact on the late.Moreover,the spatial panel regression results also revealed that one prefecture-level city’s urban-rural income gap was also significantly and positively affected by the surrounding prefecture-level cities’ urban-rural income gap.The hypothesis about transport costs has not been confirmed by the regression results of three kinds panel models,whose reason may be the ignore of large development differences between the three regions of southern Jiangsu,central Jiangsu and northern Jiangsu.Respectively,via building the panel models of southern Jiangsu’s five cities,central Jiangsu’s three cities,and northern Jiangsu’s five cities,it was found from the regression results that forcities with different levels of economic development,The degree of impact of population density,the relative price of industrial products and agricultural products,transportation costs and urban scale in urban-rural income gap was not the same.Given the results of theoretical analysis and empirical analysis,some related recommendations were put forward about the population density,agricultural development,transportation costs,urban scale and household registration system to improve the absolute income level of urban and rural residents and narrow the relative income gap.In the light of the comparative analysis of southern Jiangsu,central Jiangsu and northern Jiangsu,we can also find that the eastern,central and western regions of China need to take different measures to achieve the coordinated development of urban and rural areas in combination with their own development situation.