Impact Of Population Flow On Regional Economic Disparities In China

In China, the economy has been developed fast, the industrialization and urbanization process are accelerated, and the labor market segmentation restrictions gradually weakened with the opening to the outside world, the market economy and the continuous deepening of the reform of household registration since 1978. Meanwhile, political, economic, education, health and other inequalities among all of the regions are increasingly prominent. In order to pursuit economic interests and other equity rights, the scale of population flows from the less developed areas to developed areas gradually expands. However, the regional economic differences can cause the regional population flow; the population flow will impact on regional economy simultaneously. On the one hand, population flow can relieve the land and employment pressure of surplus labor in underdeveloped regions, but also can increase the area of per capita income by bring a lot of remittances in population outflow regions (less developed areas), which could narrow the difference of China’s regional economy. Population flow, on the other hand, also expand the regional economic differences due to the increasing population defined (developed areas) of production value, accelerate advantages regional industrial agglomeration, and weaken economic interests of the population outflow. Whether population mobility is shrinking or expanding regional economic differences has always been the core of the academic debate. In order to solve this problem, this paper embarked from the social reality of China’s unique situation, studied the influence of population flow on the economic difference in different regions of China, and deeply analyzed its internal mechanism.Permanent resident population and the proportion of permanent resident population of registered population’ deviation can reflect both the relative size of the population flow scale and whether a region is defined as population inflow or outflow region. In this study, we use the fourth, fifth and sixth national population census data points in the county of census register population and permanent resident population in data and the measure method mentioned above to calculate the index of population flow. Combined with GIS spatial analysis tools, the method of theil index and its decomposition, multilevel regression model, we attempted to analyze statistical caliber of economic space structure and the regional economic difference under two kinds of China’s register population and permanent resident population, to explore the influencing factors of China’s regional economic differences, to reveal the migration mechanism of regional economic differences and human capital, industrialization, urbanization and regional development strategy on the influence of economic differences.During the period of 1990-2010, Chinese economy spatial structure from the low level in 1990 space equilibrium, gradually to the east coast, north and northeast of Yanbian Region Agglomeration, and formed the Eastern Coastal Economic Belt, Yanbian Economic Belt in the north and along Beijing-Guangzhou Railway Economic Belt in the central of the economic space pattern of "two vertical and a horizontal" basically in 2010. During the 1990-2000 and 2000-2010 two growth phases, the household register under the caliber of "poverty trap" phenomenon compared with permanent caliber is outstanding, and mainly concentrated in the west and southwest of Yanbian, the Central Plains in the central and western regions. Living under the caliber of economic agglomeration phenomenon is more pronounced, which shows strong economic differences both between east and west and between north and south.China’s regional economic differences are more sensitive to geographic scale and population statistics caliber. Under the provincial scale biggest economic difference appears and caliber of economic differences is greater than permanent caliber (including total differences and decomposition). The household registration diameter expanding differences over time and permanent diameter difference is shrinking over time. Provincial, region, zone of all the three scales performance difference is greater than the difference among groups in the group. Regional differences of population flow show that the population is mainly from the central and southwest flow to east and south China, and economic differences on different scales were positively expand.During the period of 2000-2010, the county economy of Yangtze River Economic Belt showed an absolute β convergence economic growth trend, population flow and human capital on economic growth have effects on absolute convergence and conditional convergence respectively, indicating population flow scale and quality of the floating population have great influences on regional growth differences and regional economic differences, and heterogeneity of the labor force flow caused by regional differences in human capital to expand regional economic inequality. The trend of floating population behavior makes the population and economy of agglomeration phenomenon more prominent. Population flow is significantly positively related with regional economic difference, showing that its effect on the expansion of economic differences. Furthermore, factors such as human capital, industrial, decentralization and the regional development strategy have different degrees of influence on regional economic difference.Through the multiple linear regression analysis based on China’s regional economic differences influence factors, we can conclude:all factor’s influence on the economic differences show hierarchy characteristics; population flow expanded role for large scale of regional economic difference is more apparent, and the expansion of urban and rural population flow makes population flow to expand the strongest level difference; the flow tendency of human capital flows across different provinces or regions led to the more inclined to expand a provincial or interregional economic differences; differentiation of industrial level stems mainly from widespread industrial city, and the economic differences produced by this highlight between the cities; municipal district orientation of local fiscal expenditure lead to the biggest differences of decentralisation at county scale, which has a stronger influence on township of cities (districts) (county) expand the role of economic difference; strategic investment is an important driving force that can lead to the development of regional inequality, however, China’s provincial strategic bias has a larger influence on economic differences.