Research On The Minimum Living Standard In China

The minimum living security system,as a comprehensive system arrangement,plays an important role in helping the poor to maintain their daily life.The minimum living standard is the core content of the minimum living security system.According to the current provisions of the minimum living security system in China,the standard of urban and rural minimum living security is formulated and adjusted by the local government in combination with the actual development of local social assistance and the level of economic development.Due to the differences of economic and social development level between urban and rural areas in different regions and regions,there are differences in the minimum living standard between urban and rural areas,and the large regional differences in the level of social assistance will endanger the long-term development of the assistance system.This leads us to think,what is the gap between the minimum living standard in different regions? What is the changing trend of the gap between different regions? What factors affect the improvement or reduction of the minimum living standard?These issues have been paid less attention in previous studies,or are limited to a certain area at a certain time.To clarify these issues is helpful for in-depth exploration of the internal mechanism of changes in the urban and rural subsistence allowances.In addition,it is also of great significance for the further improvement of the social assistance system.This paper combs the data of China's prefecture and city scales from2008 to 2017,and uses spatial statistical analysis methods to conduct an in-depth analysis of the spatial distribution,regional differences and spatiotemporal evolution of the urban and rural subsistence allowance standards.We also systematically analyzed the internal mechanism of urban-rural minimum living standard and rural-urban minimum living standard gap.The main conclusions of this dissertation can be summarized as follows.(1)The regional differences between urban and rural minimum living standard are narrowing.From 2008 to 2017,the coefficient of variation and Theil index of the urban minimum living standard of China's prefecture level cities decreased from 0.3177 and0.0396 to 0.1885 and 0.0165 respectively,indicating that the regional differences of the urban minimum living standard are narrowing.At the same time,the coefficient of variation of the rural minimum living standard dropped from 0.6224 to 0.3875,and the Theil index dropped from 0.1565 to 0.0733.The regional differences of the rural minimum living standard also tend to narrow,and the regional differences of the rural minimum living standard are still larger than those of the urban minimum living standard.(2)The urban minimum living standard,the rural minimum living standard and the ratio of rural-urban minimum living standard shows significant positive spatial correlation.There exists a significant positive spatial autocorrelation in the spatial distribution of China's urban minimum living standard,namely,the cities with higher urban minimum living standard cluster with each other in spatial distribution,while the cities with lower urban minimum living standard cluster with each other in spatial distribution,in addition,the trend of cluster tends to increase.The high value agglomeration areas of urban minimum living standard are formed in Beijing-TianjinHebei,Yangtze River Delta,Pearl River Delta and some cities in Tibet,with low value agglomeration areas in central and western Xinjiang,Qinghai,southeast Gansu,northern Sichuan,Chongqing,southern Henan,central and western Hunan and central Hainan.The spatial distribution of rural minimum living standard also presents significant positive spatial autocorrelation.The high value agglomeration areas of rural minimum living standard are mainly distributed in the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta,while the low value spatial agglomeration areas are mainly distributed in the most of central and western Xinjiang,central and western Tibet,northwest Gansu,western Inner Mongolia,central and eastern Gansu,southern Ningxia,southwest Shaanxi,central Henan,southwest Hunan,eastern and central Yunnan and central and western Guangxi.The Moran'I value of rural-urban minimum living standard ratio keeps stable at about 0.56,which indicates that there is a significant spatial correlation in the gap between urban and rural minimum living standard.The high value agglomeration areas of rural-urban minimum living standard ratio are mainly distributed in the Yangtze River Delta,Pearl River Delta,some cities in Fujian,Jiangxi and Hainan,indicating that the rural-urban minimum living standard gap is small among these areas.The low value agglomeration areas of rural-urban minimum living standard ratio are mainly distributed in the most of central and western Xinjiang,central and western Tibet,northwest Gansu,western Inner Mongolia,central and eastern Gansu,southern Ningxia,southwest Shaanxi,central Henan,southwest Hunan,eastern and central Yunnan,and central and western Guangxi.(3)Urban and rural minimum living standard is affected by the level of economic development,financial capacity,social structure,the degree of opening to the outside world,competitive behavior of local governments,characteristics of local officials and national poverty alleviation policies.The results of spatial econometric model show that local governments have the tendency of competing to improve the urban and rural minimum living standard,and the per capita financial expenditure,per capita disposable income,per capita consumption level,per capita GDP,the proportion of minority population and the scale of foreign investment have a significant positive impact on the urban and rural minimum living standard.However,the scale of urban and rural minimum living security population,the proportion of education financial investment and the proportion of the elderly population have a significant negative impact on the standard of urban and rural minimum living security.There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the square of per capita financial expenditure and the standard of urban minimum living security.The proportion of central financial investment in urban minimum living security has an inhibitory effect on the improvement of urban minimum living security standards,while the proportion of central financial investment in rural minimum living security has a positive effect on rural minimum living security standards.The results show that the urban and rural minimum living standard is higher in cities where women and older leaders are in charge.The national poverty alleviation policy also affects the urban and rural minimum living standard.The poverty alleviation policy has a significant positive effect on the improvement of the rural minimum living standard in central and eastern regions.From the perspective of spatial effect of urban and rural areas,per capita GDP,per capita fiscal expenditure,the proportion of urban subsistence allowances expenditure in fiscal expenditure,average education level,the proportion of education financial investment,the number of beds per thousand people,the proportion of elderly population and the proportion of ethnic minority population all present significant spatial spillover effect.Among them,the spatial spillover effects of per capita GDP,per capita fiscal expenditure and the proportion of urban minimum living security expenditure in fiscal expenditure are positive,while the spatial spillover effects of average education level,the proportion of fiscal investment in education,the number of beds per thousand people,the proportion of elderly population and the proportion of minority population are negative.From the perspective of rural situation,there exist spatial spillovers in the variables of per capita GDP,per capita consumption expenditure,rural disposable income,per capita financial expenditure,foreign investment scale,average education level,third industry proportion,central financial investment proportion,elderly population proportion,and bed number per thousand.Among them,the spatial spillover effect of per capita GDP,rural per capita consumption expenditure,rural disposable income and subsistence allowances expenditure in the financial ratio is positive,while the per capita fiscal expenditure,the scale of foreign investment,the average education level,the number of beds per thousand people have negative spatial spillover effect.(4)The gap between rural and urban minimum living standard is affected by the level of economic development,the size of urban and rural minimum living security population,financial capacity,the characteristics of local officials.Per capita GDP has a positive effect on the difference of rural-urban minimum living standard,that is,economic development can narrow the gap of rural-urban minimum living standard under the control of other variables.The level of urban economic development has a significant positive impact on improving the standard of urban and rural minimum living standard.The areas with higher level of urban economic development tend to have a smaller gap between urban and rural areas,contributing positively to narrow the gap between urban and rural minimum living standard.The per capita financial expenditure also has a significant positive impact on the rural-urban minimum living standard gap.As an important indicator of local financial capacity,per capita fiscal expenditure has a considerable positive effect on the improvement of urban and rural minimum living standard.Cities with strong local financial capacity also have the financial strength to maintain a small gap between urban and rural minimum living standard.The square coefficient of per capita fiscal expenditure is negative,which shows that local fiscal capacity has a positive effect on narrowing the gap between urban and rural minimum living standard.However,when the level of fiscal expenditure reaches a certain level,the effect of fiscal capacity on narrowing the gap between urban and rural minimum living security standard is decreasing.Through the in-depth analysis of the current situation and influencing factors of the urban and rural minimum living standard,we also summarize the problems existing in the urban and rural minimum living standard system,and put forward corresponding countermeasures and suggestions on the basis of international experience.The contributions of this paper are mainly reflected in the following aspects.First,research perspective.In the research on the minimum living standard,a large number of literatures focus on the formulation of the minimum living standard and the influencing factors of the minimum living standard,while few study the development,evolution and regional differences of the minimum living standard and the minimum living standard compensation standard from the perspective of time and space.This paper attempts to combine the spatial statistical analysis method with the evolution of the minimum living standard,using the data of China's prefecture level cities from 2008 to 2017 to demonstrate the internal mechanism of the evolution of the minimum living standard,and discusses the relationship between the minimum living standard and relative poverty.Second,the supplement of the theoretical system.This study breaks through the analysis of social assistance related theories in existing studies,such as economic development level,financial capacity and scale of assistance,integrates local government competition theory and economic,social and official characteristics,and draws lessons from the influencing factors of the formation mechanism of East Asian welfare system.Starting from the factors of politics,economy,society,globalization,culture and the coverage scale of the minimum living allowance,we discussed the internal mechanism of the changes in the standard of the minimum living allowance for urban,rural and rural areas,which is a useful supplement to the study of the standard of the minimum living allowance for urban and rural areasThird,research methods.The spatial distribution,regional characteristics and spatiotemporal evolution of urban-rural minimum living standard are analyzed by using spatial analysis method,and the influencing factors of urban-rural and rural-urban minimum living standard are empirically analyzed by using spatial econometric model.In order to verify the robustness of the model results,the spatial adjacency matrix,inverse distance space matrix,economic distance matrix and provincial-level city return matrix are compared The fitting results of four kinds of matrixes are given.In addition,this study also uses the comparative research method to analyze the differences of spatial distribution,regional characteristics,temporal and spatial evolution and influencing factors of urban and rural minimum living standard,which enriches the comparative study of urban and rural minimum living standard.In addition,this paper also discusses the connection between the urban and rural minimum living standard and the relative poverty standard.Through detailed demonstration,it puts forward that 1.5 times of the rural minimum living standard and2 times of the urban minimum living standard should be taken as the relative poverty standard line,and calculates the standard rate of relative poverty and the scale of relative poverty population with the grouping data of urban and rural residents' income and Lorenz curve equation.