The Research On Apple Growers Income Inequality

China is the world’s largest producer of apple, and its apple planting area and production are first in the world, at the same time，China is also the world’s biggest apple consumption country, apple’s sustainable development is of great significance to our country’s safety of agricultural product. With great changes of the allocation of apple productionin China, the income inequality between apple growers is also increased year by year,income inequality has become the key to the stable development of apple industry.We can foresee that our country’s economic policy for apple industry will gradually shift focus from maintaining economic growth to narrowing the income gap. Therefore,to research on apple growers’ income inequality is a vital content to our country’s apple industry even the whole agricultural economy.This paper is based on the theories about farmers income inequality and related literature at home and abroad. In order to get the current present situation and causesof apple growers’ income inequality, provide guidance for shrinking income inequalitythrough policies or finances in the future, we will adopt the research design of measuring before decomposing, use measure method about income inequality and shapley decomposition method to research the apple growers’ income inequality from the microperspective based on the first-hand household-level survey data from apple growers ineight case counties of four provinces in the Loess Plateau---one of the main appleproduction areas in China.The main research conclusion is as follows:In terms of income inequality measurement, apple growers in Loess Plateau mainly gainincome from apple planting and non-agricultural business, now the degree of incomeinequality has exceeded the warning line and the distribution of income is not optimistic. Asto groups, this situation is mainly caused by the income changes of middle income group butnot the upper one. As to regions, about80%~85%of the income inequality is from the countyonly15%~20%is from regional differences. For the eight counties, the county incomeinequality is a long-standing universal fact rather than regional characteristic, but the group who leads to the income inequality is different. Among them, Wanrong, Lingbao, Linyi arecaused by the middle income group; Fengxiang, Pucheng, Yucheng and Qingcheng are causedby the middle and upper income groups; Maiji is mainly caused by the income changes ofupper income group.In terms of income inequality causes, the direct performance of apple growers’ incomeinequality reflects in the income which is influenced by main input factors like land, labor,chemical fertilizer, pesticide and elements like technical progress, market supply and demand.When the apple growers make agricultural technology selection and production investmentdecision, their basis come from understanding for the risk which can be divided intoendogenous risk and regional risk, the former is decided by growers’ self gift while the latteris determined by region. According to the analysis framework, we can distribute the causesinducing the income inequality into three categories–growers’ own endowment, productionfactors and regional risk aversion coefficient. Adopting regression-based shapleydecomposition method to make a research on the income inequality causes, we obtain thefollowing conclusion: the regional risk aversion coefficient is the main influential factor togrowers’ income inequality, the material input to apple takes the second place, the next one islabor input while the contribution of growers’ ages and the proportion of apple planting areato agricultural acreage is negative.According to the above research, our view is that the government should regulate incomeinequality from aspects such as finance, reform of system and so on:(1) increase materialsubsidies, balance large subsidies and direct subsidies to farmers;(2) improve the cooperativesystem of apple growers and gradually make the large subsidies transiting to cooperativesubsidies;(3) optimize the subsidy structure, perfect the subsidy style and reduce of risk ofapple growers.