Study On The Relationship Between Urbanization And Economic Growth In Inner Mongolia

Urbanization, as a driving force and a key stage of economic development, is an inevitable result of socio-economic advancement to a certain level. In other words, urbanization and economic development are closely related. The economy of Inner Mongolia has witnessed sustained and rapid growth since the reform and opening up. Especially after2002, the per capita GDP is increasing with an average annual growth rate of22.87%, which is higher than the national average rate of7.65%. Meanwhile, the urban population of Inner Mongolia has reached14.376million by the end of2012, which accounts for57.74%of the total population. The urbanization has entered into an advanced stage, but there are many problems in their rapid development process, such as the quality of development, coordination and so on. It is of great significance to explore the relationship between urbanization and economic growth in Inner Mongolia for enhancing the level of urbanization, promoting economic growth, and strengthening the positive interaction between the two. Therefore the relationship between economic development and urbanization has become a crucial issue of coordination of social and economic development.Based on domestic and foreign research literature, this paper attempts to make a in-depth theoretical and empirical analysis on the relationship between the urbanization and economic growth. The research entails the following several parts:The first one introduces the research backgroundresearch significance, research contents, research methods, and reviews previous studies on this issue.The second part introduces the relationship theory between urbanization and economic growth. Based on the classical theory of urbanization and economic growth, this paper analyzes the interaction between urbanization and economic growth, and points out that the economy is the foundation of the urbanization, urbanization also promotes the economic growth at the same time through the gathering effect, scale effect, and division effect, Additionally, because of the uncoordinated relation between urbanization and industrialization, urbanization and economic growth can’t match, thus urbanization is likely to lag behind or appear ahead of time.The third part introduces the history and current situation of urbanization development in Inner Mongolia. Before reform and opening up, the state implemented the planned economy system and the construction of urbanization is driven by the government. It develops in an upside-down way, lacking of necessary interaction with economy, and the correlation between urbanization and economy is not strong. After the reform and opening up policy, the cities and towns act as a space carrier for economic activity, fully play a role of the growth pole, the correlation of both enhanced. Additionally the author makes a fitting line by the dates of capita GDP and population urbanization rate, the fitting line shows that there is the positive linear relationship between the two.The fourth part examines the relationship between urbanization and economic growth in Inner Mongolia by the empirical analysis, this paper analyzes the relationship between urbanization and economic growth dynamically, from the aspect of population urbanization rate and land urbanization rate respectively. The results indicate that there is a long-term cointegration relationship between the urbanization and economic growth; but a one-way causal relationship exits, economic growth is the reason of the urbanization, and urbanization is not the cause of the economic growth; the interaction between the two have a lag of four years.The aim of fifth part is to find problems and puts forward policy recommendations to promote the coordinated development of urbanization and economic growth according to the research conclusions. The policy recommendations includes:speed up the reform of household registration system, land system, the social security system, scientifically and reasonably plan the urban construction, focus on urban development more, fully used the effect of city circle, and so on.