The Impact Of Digital Inclusive Finance On Urban-Rural Income Gap In Jiangsu Province

At present,China is vigorously promoting the digital transformation of inclusive finance and the priority policy of entrepreneurship and employment.However,there is still a gap in income distribution between urban and rural groups or other different groups in China,and the Gini coefficient is still higher than the world warning line.In this context,it is of great theoretical and practical significance to study the impact of digital inclusive finance on urban-rural income gap and its intermediary effect.Especially,the research based on the county level is conducive to the relevant departments to take targeted and regional measures.Until now,the research on digital inclusive finance and urban-rural income gap at home and abroad mostly focuses on the division of provincial administrative regions,and the research on the county level in a province is relatively scarce;in addition,there are few studies on the intermediary effect in this process,and there is almost no research on the intermediary effect of entrepreneurship and employment in the literature in this area;as for the measurement of entrepreneurship level,most indicators are biased towards surviving enterprises rather than entrepreneurial activities,and the regional population factor is ignored.Can digital inclusive finance ease the urban-rural income gap at the county level? Is the role consistent across regions? Can entrepreneurship and employment become the intermediary effect?Facing the above problems,this paper takes Jiangsu Province as an example to carry out the following research:First of all,this paper combs the existing literature on digital inclusive finance,urban-rural income gap and the relationship between them,and bases on the long tail theory and information asymmetry theory to analyze the impact mechanism of digital inclusive finance on urban-rural income gap from two aspects of entrepreneurship and employment,and then puts forward three research hypotheses: digital inclusive finance can narrow the urban-rural income gap,it can narrow the urban-rural income gap by improving the level of entrepreneurship and employment.Secondly,in the empirical part,this paper firstly uses the relevant data of 41 counties in Jiangsu Province from 2015 to 2020 to empirically analyze the impact of digital inclusive finance on the urban-rural income gap and the regional heterogeneity of the impact effect,and uses the level of economic development as a threshold variable to analyze the relationship between the two;on this basis,we further empirically test whether entrepreneurship and employment play a mediating role in the above impacts;finally,according to the empirical results,this paper can draw conclusions and make recommendations.The empirical research results of this paper show that:(1)From the data of 41 counties and cities in Jiangsu Province,the county level digital inclusive finance and its three sub dimensions have significantly alleviated the urban-rural income gap.(2)The role of digital inclusive finance in alleviating the urban-rural income gap has regional heterogeneity.The role of digital inclusive finance in alleviating the urban-rural income gap in central Jiangsu is higher than that in southern and northern Jiangsu.(3)The level of economic development has a single threshold effect in the impact of digital inclusive finance on the urban-rural income gap.(4)Digital inclusive finance can narrow the urban-rural income gap by improving the level of entrepreneurship.Digital inclusive finance promotes entrepreneurship by meeting the capital needs of rural residents for entrepreneurship,easing the financing constraints of this group,realizing income increase of residents,and finally alleviating the urban-rural income gap.(5)Digital inclusive finance cannot narrow the urban-rural income gap by improving the level of employment,and the relationship between the employment level and the urban-rural income gap presents an inverted U-shaped relationship.There are three innovations in this paper:(1)Research perspective innovation.This paper focuses on the intermediary role of entrepreneurship and employment in the process of digital inclusive finance affecting the urban-rural income gap,excavates the internal transmission mechanism,and enriches the mechanism of digital inclusive finance affecting the urban-rural income gap,which is more meaningful for reference.This paper also takes the level of economic development as the threshold variable,and studies the impact of the former on the latter.(2)Research object innovation.At present,most scholars’ research on digital inclusive finance and urban-rural income gap focuses on the division of provincial administrative regions,while the research on the county level in a province is relatively lacking.From the perspective of representativeness and complexity,this paper selects 41 counties in Jiangsu Province as research objects to analyze the impact of digital inclusive finance on urban-rural income gap and further explore the heterogeneous impact of southern,central and northern Jiangsu.(3)Variable construction innovation.As for the measurement of entrepreneurship level,based on the enterprise level,this paper considers the impact of the total population of the region on the industrial and commercial registered enterprises,and uses the change of the ratio of the number of industrial and commercial enterprises each year to the total population at the end of the year as the measurement index of entrepreneurship level.