Research On The Income Gap Between Urban And Rural Residents Of Zigui County

Since the reform and opening-up, income of urban and rural residents in China has increased greatly and the living condition has been improved. However, the gap of people's income has also been widened. In terms of Gini Coefficient which demonstrates the level of income gap, China's Gini Coefficient was 0.25 before the reform and opening-up, while it was recorded 0.454 in 2002, surpassing the warning line (0.4) by 80%. Among the rest, the gap of income between urban and rural residents is the most obvious. According to the survey, the effect of the income gap between urban and rural residents upon the entire social income gap is over 50%. It is not only a challenge to the harmonizing development between urban cities and rural areas and the construction of a better-off society, but also one of the most outstanding problems attracting people's close attention.In this research, the gap of income between urban and rural residents of Zigui County Hubei Province, the first county of the Three Gorges, is given a positive analysis.First, on the basis of understanding the history of the urban and rural residents' income of Zigui County since the reform and opening-up, the thesis constructs an evaluating coefficients system of the income gap of urban and rural residents, including absolute gap, income ratio, the gap of increasing rate, interior gap, horizontal comparison of income gap and the gap of income-earning capabilities, factors and conditions, in order to give a comprehensive evaluation of the income gap between urban and rural residents.Second, in the research, the thesis objectively analyses the positive and negative effects of the widened income gap. Nowadays, the negative effect is dominant which is against the economic development instead of being in favor of it in the past. The thesis studies the underlying reasons and influencing factors, including the market reason (the widening of the income gap is the inevitable result of transformation from planned economy to socialistic market economy and the marketization brings about Matthew effect), the institutional reason (urban residents benefit much more from the income distribution institution than rural residents; social and economic institutions exert insufficient protection on low income residents and insufficient regulation on high income residents; the abuse of industrial monopolization and power capital distorts the income distribution and the market performance is not normative and the juristic institution is not perfect ), the systematical reason (the dualistic system of urban city and rural areas takes much from farmers; the investment in rural areas is little and the regulation is tight),resource reason (imbalance development from the inherent difference of natural and social resources and the difference of human capital between urban and rural residents) and so on. Third, with above reasons and reference to experience of diminishing the income gap between urban and rural residents in Taiwan Province, the United States, Japan and Korea, the thesis deduces measures to diminish the income gap between urban and rural residents and plan the harmonious development between urban and rural areas of Zigui County, so as to give valuable methods to realize the diminishing of the income gap between urban and rural residents with the increase of their income level.