Research On Regional Balanced Development Of Public Libraries In China Based On Gini Coefficient And Theil Index

Public library is an important part of social public cultural service and one of the important ways to protect citizens’ basic cultural rights.From the perspective of social development,the development level of libraries is one of the important symbols of a country or region’s civilization progress.Since the reform and opening up,the library cause in China has made great progress.However,due to the restriction of geographical environment factors and the influence of cultural and economic development level in different regions,the relevant indicators and data of public libraries in different regions are quite different,and the development of public libraries is unbalanced.Based on the analysis of relevant literature,this paper constructs an evaluation index system for the development of public libraries in China,including 1 general index,4 first-level index and 20 second-level index.Entropy weight method is used to calculate the weight of each index and carry out the arithmetic average with the data of each index from 2016 to 2018 as the original data of public libraries in China,and determine the average weight to assign weight to each index.The evaluation value of public library development in 31 provinces,municipalities and autonomous regions in China from 2016 to 2018 is calculated by using the evaluation index system of public library development.On this basis,the Gini coefficient and Theil index are used to measure the regional development balance of public libraries in China.The average Gini coefficient of China’s GDP from 2016 to 2018 is selected as the standard to judge the balance.If the Gini coefficient of public library development is less than the Gini coefficient of GDP,it is considered that the development of public libraries in different regions is balanced.If the Gini coefficient of public library development is greater than the Gini coefficient of GDP,it is considered that the development of public libraries in different regions is unbalanced.Theil index is used to decompose the regional differences in the development of public libraries in China.The results of Gini coefficient and Theil index show that the regional development of public libraries in China is unbalanced.From 2016 to 2018,the Gini coefficient is higher than the average Gini coefficient of GDP,which is already unbalanced,and the degree of imbalance is getting worse.The unbalanced development of public libraries in the eastern,western and central regions is the main reason for the unbalanced development of public libraries in China,and the larger difference of public libraries in the eastern region is the main reason for the aggravated unbalanced development of public libraries in China.Finally,the paper discusses the results of measuring the regional balanced development of public libraries in China.