The Spatial Scale Effects Of The Regional Economic Disparities In The Central China Area

Regional economic disparities have been every community's concerns; the regional economic disparities of our country have achieved marked results. Most studies concerns on the methods and reasons, but different spatial scales also effect the results. This article takes the Central China area as research object, analyze the spatial scale effects of the regional economic disparities in the Central China Area at multiple spatial scales, ranging from county scale to province scale.In order to analysis the effect of spatial scales, this paper choose the repetition of single-scale method (e.g. coefficient of variation, Gini coefficient and Theil index) and scale variances, to analyze the regional economic disparities in the Central China area between 1990 to 2007, at multiple spatial scales, ranging from county scale to province scale. Besides, it chooses different space decomposition methods to analyze the influence factors of the the Central China area. And the analysis selects only three main indices-population, GDP and per capita GDP. The results of the repetition of single-scale method show:at three scales, though the study chooses the same index, the results are different. At city scale and county scale, the figures show the same tendency and are all tend to increase, but at province scale is different, especially after 2003. After 2003, the figures show the disparities amplify at city scale and county scale, but opposite at province scale. The results of scale variances show:at city scale and county scale, the conclusions show the same tendency, both indicated that the lowest value was in 1997, and then enlarged clearly. But these are different from province scale, especially after 2003. After 2003, the figure decreased at province. The results of the two methods both indicated that the conclusions show the same tendency at city scale and county scale, but differ from province scale. The results of decomposition of scale variances and two-stage nested decomposition of Theil index indicated that disparities between cities and counties are the main factors of the regional economic disparities in the Central China area, the disparities between provinces influent it lightly. So, for the analysis of regional economic disparities, the smaller spatial scale is the better choice.