Study On The Impact Of Transportation Infrastructure On Urban-rural Income Gap Based On Spatial Measurement

The wide income gap between urban and rural areas seriously hinders economic development,is not conducive to building a harmonious socialist society,and is a major stumbling block to building a moderately prosperous society.Since 2000,China’s Gini coefficient has been above the warning line of 0.4,indicating that China’s income disparity is at a high level and the problem of uneven income distribution is serious.Public infrastructure construction is an important factor in improving people’s living standards and promoting social and economic development.Transportation infrastructure,as an important part of public infrastructure,transportation infrastructure is not only directly related to the economic development of cities,but also acts on the urban-rural income gap.However,there is a lack of literature that studies the income gap from the perspective of transportation infrastructure,and it does not take into account the lagging characteristics of the impact of transportation infrastructure,on which this paper is based.Based on the above background,this paper firstly collates the existing literature,learns the concept,characteristics of transportation infrastructure and the influence mechanism on urban-rural income gap through reading the literature,and studies the relevant theories;secondly,analyzes the changes of transportation infrastructure and urban-rural income gap;immediately follows the spatial correlation test on urban-rural income gap data,which confirms the existence of spatial correlation;finally,by constructing a spatial econometric model and using the panel data of 30 provinces from2000 to 2020,we study the influence of transportation infrastructure on urban-rural income gap.The article concludes as follows: First,the mileage and density of road and railway both show an increasing trend year by year.The average annual growth of road density is 1.83%,and the average annual growth of railway density is 5.56%.The proportion of railway passenger traffic increases year by year,with an average annual growth of 13.1%.Second,China’s Gini coefficient has shown a slow decline in the past two decades,but it is still above the warning line of 0.4,and the income gap still needs to be further narrowed.Third,the national income gap in the spatial distribution is divided into two major aggregation areas of high high aggregation and low low aggregation: one is the high level income gap aggregation area consisting of five provinces of Gansu,Qinghai,Sichuan,Yunnan and Guangxi;the second is the aggregation area of lower income gap level centered on Shanghai and Hebei.Fourthly,the construction of expressways,primary and secondary roads can reduce the income gap between rural and urban areas by 0.051-0.063%,0.167% and 0.373%,respectively.The construction of other levels of roads and railways is not conducive to promoting income equity.Fifth,factors such as education level and urbanization level can significantly reduce the income gap between urban and rural areas,while industrial structure and financial development level can widen the income gap to some extent.Based on the research findings,this paper puts forward six countermeasure suggestions: First,increase the financial investment in transportation infrastructure projects to promote the increase of quality and quantity of transportation infrastructure.Second,increase the construction of rural transportation infrastructure to improve the rural transportation network.Third,improve the education level in rural areas and promote educational equity.Fourth,vigorously promote the economic construction in rural areas and gradually improve the level of rural urbanization.Fifth,optimize the structure of opening up to the outside world and improve the level of opening up to the outside world.Sixth,the government should coordinate the overall situation,provide targeted policy intervention efforts and increase the amount of capital investment.