Research On The Heterogeneity Of The Impact Of Labor Mobility On The Urban-Rural Income Gap

The 20 th report putting forward to “promote urban-rural integration and coordinated regional development,comprehensively promote rural revitalization” will focus on urban-rural issues.Although China has completely eradicated absolute poverty by the end of 2020,it does not mean that the urban-rural income gap has disappeared.With economic growth and system improvement,labor large-scale flow has become an important feature of economic society.Whether this massive human flow can become the breach of the future to narrow the urbanrural income gap is still worth further exploration.Existing studies on the impact of labor flow on the urban-rural income gap have different views,and most of them grasp the effect from the overall level,and there are few discussions on its dynamics,changes,and heterogeneity.Therefore,the study will examine the heterogeneous impact of labor flow on the urban-rural income gap from three dimensions of region,time,and space,then provide a reference for realizing and enhancing urban-rural integration in the future.Based on the existing literature and classical theories,the research first combs the historical evolution,current characteristics,and influencing mechanism of labor mobility and the urban-rural income gap.In addition,this study uses the panel data of 31 provinces in China from 1999 to 2020 to measure the level of labor mobility and urban-rural income gap and describes the dynamic evolution characteristics of both from the spatial and temporal dimensions.Then,the fixed effect model and the spatial Dubin model are used to analyze the heterogeneous impact of labor mobility on the urban-rural income gap.The result shows: on the whole,labor mobility significantly reduces the rural-urban income gap in the local area while enlarging the rural-urban income gap in the surrounding area.The horizontal comparison of subregions shows that the effect of labor mobility on reducing the rural-urban income gap is strongest in the center,followed by the east,but has not obvious in the west and north.In terms of stages,before 2010,the low-speed labor flow(less than 15%)exacerbates the urban-rural income inequality in the surrounding areas,and the final influence on the urban-rural income gap in the whole region shows a positive expansion effect.After 2010,the high-speed flow of labor(more than 15%)alleviates the urban-rural income inequality in the surrounding areas and shows a negative reduction effect on the urban-rural income gap in the whole region.In addition to labor flow,the impact of economic development level,urbanization rate,infrastructure construction,financial education,social security,and employment expenditure on the urbanrural income gap is also heterogeneous.Finally,according to the realistic scenario and empirical results,this study puts forward some suggestions that are conducive to reducing the urban-rural income gap,such as accelerating labor flow,releasing the positive spillover effect of the flow,and adjusting the policy according to local conditions.