Empirical Analysis Of The Factors Influencing Urban And Rural Residents’ Income Gap In Jiangsu Province

Since2000, the economy of Jiangsu province gets rapid development. The percapita income level and the standard of people’s living have been improved. But theincome gap of urban and rural residents in Jiangsu province expands largely. Althoughthe income of farmer in Jiangsu province obtains relatively rapid growth, the growthrate still lags behind urban residents’. That makes the income gap of urban and ruralresidents large year by year. Too large income gap not only will affect the efficiencyof economy, but also will affect the stability of the whole society. At the same time itwill brings a series of serious problems of society and economy.Jiangsu is one of famous provinces in China. Jiangsu is in the top of China ineconomy, education, science, culture, history, traffic, travel, national defense, industry,finance, shipping, foreign trade, city construction and other indicators. It creates the1/10economic gross with1%of the country’s land.All of the studies about income gap, research achievements on income gap of ourcountry occupy a large proportion. They mainly use the provincial-level panel data inempirical researches, but the application of city-level panel data of a province isfewer in empirical studies. This article uses city-level panel data of three regions inJiangsu province to study the influencing factors of the income gap of urban and ruralresidents. The results show that two element structure coefficient (measured byRelative labor productivity ratio between agricultural and non-agricultural),employment structure, the shares of import in GDP, the coefficient of foreign directinvestment have negative correlation with the income gap of urban and rural residents.The shares of export in GDP, human capital have positive correlation with the incomegap of urban and rural residents.