| The report to the 19 th National Congress stated that "We will significantly narrow the development gap between urban and rural areas and between regions and the gap in people’s living standards"."We will encourage rural migrant workers to find jobs and start businesses through multiple channels,promote a more rational and orderly income distribution and narrow the income distribution gap." However,due to the influence of the urban-rural "dual structure" characteristic for a long time,the income gap between Chinese urban and rural areas cannot be ignored.Inclusive finance is of great significance to promoting coordinated regional development and narrowing urban-rural income gap.Therefore,it is of theoretical and practical significance to clarify the influence and mechanism of inclusive finance on urban-rural income gap for rural revitalization and regional coordinated development.Therefore,this paper focuses on the impact and mechanism of inclusive finance on the urban-rural income gap.Based on the provincial data of 30 provinces from 2011 to 2020,the method of combining the intermediary effect model and spatial econometric model is adopted.This paper studies the mediating effect of farmers’ transformation in inclusive finance affecting urban-rural income gap and the spatial effect of traditional and digital inclusive finance affecting urban-rural income gap.In addition,the spatial characteristics of traditional and digital inclusive finance and their roles in urban-rural income gap were compared.Finally,conclusions were drawn and targeted policy suggestions were put forward.From the above analysis,the main conclusions are drawn: On the whole,the overall level of traditional and digital inclusive finance shows an increasing trend,and presents an unbalanced distribution among regions.Digital inclusive finance is developing faster and its geographical distribution is gradually "moving south" compared with traditional inclusive finance.Both traditional inclusive finance and digital inclusive finance can narrow the urban-rural income gap through the transformation of farmers,while producing negative spatial spillover effects on the urban-rural income gap in surrounding areas.The transition of farmers has a good mediating effect in the alleviation of urban-rural income gap by inclusive finance but there is heterogeneity in different dimensions.Digital inclusive finance is a good complement to traditional inclusive finance.The intermediary effect and spatial effect of farmers’ transition in different regions are heterogeneous in the process of inclusive finance affecting urban-rural income gap.The spatial spillover effect of traditional inclusive finance on urban-rural income gap in western China is better than that of digital inclusive finance. |
