| In the past 40 years,China’s economy has developed at a high speed,with GDP increasing year by year and residents’ income increasing rapidly.At the same time,China’s fight against poverty has made remarkable achievements: the number of poor people has decreased rapidly,all rural poor people under the current standards will be lifted out of poverty by the end of 2020,832 national poor counties have all been removed,and the overall regional poverty problem has been solved.Although China has eliminated absolute poverty,relative poverty still exists,and the absolute value of the income gap between urban and rural residents increases year by year.Consolidating the results of poverty alleviation is an important task after the eradication of absolute poverty,as well as the basis and prerequisite for comprehensive rural revitalization.In recent years,China has made remarkable achievements in poverty alleviation,but there are still problems such as poor self-development ability of farmers,weak market competitiveness,and lack of financial support.The work of rural revitalization in the new era requires the establishment of a long-term mechanism to improve the income of low-income groups.This mechanism not only needs to promote the income of low-income groups and narrow the gap between urban and rural areas,but also needs to be accurate,effectively improve the living conditions of low-income groups in the tail.It also needs to be sustainable,create a good business and production environment for low-income groups,and improve their production and management initiative and ability.It is worth noting that in recent years,with the gradual improvement of rural Internet infrastructure,the rural Internet penetration rate has rapidly increased,the "first level digital gap" in the accessibility of information and communication technologies has gradually been closed,and digital technologies such as e-commerce and digital finance have accelerated their penetration into rural areas,bringing profound changes to China’s rural production and lifestyle.Do these digital technologies really improve the production and life of farmers? Can it promote the increase of rural household income? How to influence the labor choice of rural families? What impact will it have on income inequality? It can be predicted that e-commerce and digital finance will be the most frequently used digital technologies by Chinese residents for a long time in the future.Their in-depth development in rural areas will inevitably have a profound impact on the implementation of the strategy of common prosperity and rural revitalization.Therefore,it is necessary to conduct in-depth research on the impact of these digital technologies on rural household income and labor allocation.Only after the relevant mechanisms are clarified,can targeted policies be better introduced to promote the independent development of farmers and promote the long-term sustainable development of rural areas.Based on the income increase and poverty reduction and labor choice of rural residents,this paper answers the question whether e-commerce and digital finance can promote the high-quality development of rural economy through empirical research.Specifically,the article includes three parts,and the main research contents and conclusions of each part are as follows.In the first part,this study starts with alleviating the problem of information asymmetry in rural product markets,focusing on how e-commerce,a digital application that is most commonly used by residents,affects rural household income growth,and discusses its mechanism of action.This article matches the "China E-commerce Development Index" jointly released by the National Engineering Laboratory of E-commerce Transaction Technology at Tsinghua University and other institutions with the 2016 and 2018 China Household Tracking Survey(CFPS)databases,and examines the role of e-commerce development in increasing rural household income from the perspective of effective integration of demand and supply.The research results indicate that,firstly,the development of e-commerce has significantly increased the income of farmers,and this promoting effect also helps to narrow the income gap within rural areas and between urban and rural areas;Secondly,the development of e-commerce helps to alleviate information asymmetry,significantly improving the consumption level of urban residents related to clothing and food,laying the foundation for expanding the market size of rural e-commerce products,and promoting the employment and entrepreneurship of rural residents.Finally,this paper also examines the heterogeneous effect of e-commerce development on rural household income,and finds that households engaged in rural industries,families with higher average education level of family members,and regions with higher rural fixed assets investment benefit more from e-commerce development.The second part continues the analytical approach from the previous part,focusing on the impact of another important digital technology-digital finance-on rural households from the perspective of information asymmetry in rural financial markets.In addition to rural household income,the development of digital technology will also have an impact on the allocation structure of rural labor force,thereby affecting the labor income and income inequality of various departments of rural households.The allocation of labor force is the result of individual comparison of costs and benefits and pursuit of more efficient use.Digital finance has profoundly affected the production and life of rural families,so it will also affect the opportunity cost of non-agricultural employment of rural labor force.However,the existing literature has not fully discussed it from this perspective.This part matches the 2018 China Family Survey(CFPS)database with the "Peking University Digital Inclusive Finance Index",creatively explains how the development of digital finance affects the allocation of rural labor from the perspective of the opportunity cost of non-agricultural employment,and finds that the development of digital finance significantly improves the probability and number of non-agricultural employment of rural households,but reduces the probability and number of agricultural employment.The mechanism lies in that digital finance alleviates the financial constraints of rural households engaged in agricultural production,improves the level of mechanization of agricultural production,and thus produces the substitution of agricultural capital for labor force,making the surplus labor in agricultural sectors flow to non-agricultural sectors.This paper also finds that the development of digital finance has significantly improved local employment and non local employment at the same time,and has not led to the total amount of rural labor showing inter regional substitution.The reason is that digital finance has activated rural idle labor and improved the overall employment level.In addition to the allocation effect of labor force,this study also empirically examined the impact of digital finance development on the labor income of various sectors,and found that the development of digital finance significantly improved the income of family self operated agricultural labor,family self operated non-agricultural labor and non-agricultural employment labor.Further,this paper studies the inequality of labor income in various departments.The existing literature on the decomposition of income inequality based on the regression equation does not consider the sample self selection problem and the potential endogenous problem of core variables in job selection.This study improves the Fields decomposition method,and through empirical research,it is found that the development of digital finance has improved the income inequality within various sectors,which has the greatest impact on the inequality of household self operated non-agricultural labor income.The third part is the integration and deepening of the first two parts.This study notes that in the process of county e-commerce development,the short board of industrial chain is gradually exposed.Rural e-commerce products in most areas are produced in family workshops or processed by individuals,and are subject to the conditions of sites,personnel and equipment,so large-scale and standardized production cannot be carried out,thus affecting the "compliance sales" of rural e-commerce products on e-commerce platforms.Therefore,the relief of information asymmetry in the rural product market is not enough to fully play the role of e-commerce in promoting farmers’ income.We also need to pay attention to the information asymmetry in the rural financial market.Obviously,the combination of digital finance and e-commerce has brought new opportunities to improve farmers’ income,but there is no literature research on the synergistic effect of the two.Based on the perspective of human capital and rural labor endowment,from the perspective of digital finance to ease farmers’ financing constraints,this paper empirically tests whether digital finance can improve the efficiency of e-commerce to help farmers.This research matches the data of China’s counties from 2014 to 2018 with the county’s "Peking University Digital Inclusive Finance Index".Based on the quasi natural experiment of e-commerce in rural comprehensive demonstration counties,and through the empirical analysis of the generalized double difference model,it is found that the development of digital finance has improved the effect of e-commerce on increasing farmers’ income.Its mechanism is to ease the financing constraints of farmers by supplementing traditional finance.Considering that both the level of human capital and the endowment of labor force affect the use efficiency of digital technology,this study believes that the impact of digital finance on the efficiency of e-commerce agriculture assistance is also affected by these two factors.Empirical analysis shows that the development of digital finance has a more significant impact on the relationship between e-commerce and farmers’ income in areas where the proportion of rural labor force is higher and the average education level is higher.Furthermore,if we break down the two dimensions of digital finance popularization and use,we find that,compared with non poor counties,the popularization of digital finance in poor counties plays a stronger role in improving the efficiency of e-commerce agriculture assistance,while the use of digital finance plays a weaker role in improving the efficiency of e-commerce agriculture assistance.In conclusion,this paper discusses whether the development of e-commerce and digital finance can promote the high-quality development of rural economy from the perspectives of income and employment choices closely related to the welfare of rural residents,and systematically and comprehensively explores the mechanism.This study provides theoretical support and empirical evidence for deepening the rural revitalization strategy in the digital economy era,and provides decision-making reference for subsequent policy formulation. |
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