The Research Concerning The Influence On Income Inequality Of Rural Residents By The Sloping Land Conversion Project

As a major forestry project with the biggest amount of capital investment, the largest scale of construction, the strongest policy support, and the widest range, the Sloping Land Conversion Project(referred to as “the Project” hereinafter) had aroused the concerns of the entire society from its very beginning since 1999. According to the statistics, Chinese central government has invested a total of 354.2 billion RMB for the implementation of the Project up to 2013;completed tasks of reforestation has reached 25.8062 million hm2 all over China; more than 124 million rural residents of 32 million rural households were benefited from the Project directly;the construction and achievement consolidation have made obvious progress; forest coverage rate within the project area increased by 3%, ecological environment has been improved significantly,planting configuration has been optimized to a further level, income of rural residents realized fast growth, excellent ecological benefits, economic benefits and social benefits were achieved by the Project.With the steady progress of the Project, the continuing expansion of Project objective, the ecological objective of “Increase the forest coverage, prevent the soil desertification, improve ecological environment” at the beginning gradually expands itself to the economic objective of“Adjust the rural industrial structure, increase the income of rural residents, help to lift the impoverished regions out of poverty”. In recent years, the general idea of the Project has been adjusted to the synchronization of achievement consolidation and steady progress, the development of reforestation and livelihood improvement. Therefore, the influence on reflecting the living standard and income as well as income inequality of rural households within the Project region by the Project is gradually becoming one of the standards for project evaluation.Through arrangement of existing documents, we found out that scholars tend to focus on the influence on the income of rural residents by the Project in most occasions. There are only a few scholars who study the influence on the income inequality of rural households by the Project.Moreover, the time span of the data adopted by most researches is quite short, unable to reflect the long-term effect on the income and its inequality of rural households by the Project. Among the research data of the Project, which comes from the joint-conducted project by Finance Department and the State Forestry Bureau, there is balanced panel data of 652 samples from 6examples in provinces of Shaanxi and Sichuan from 1995 to 2010. A decomposition method based on regression analysis which emerged from the non-balanced decomposition field a fewyears ago, and it was widely applied – Shapley Value is adopted; Three variables: “Have you participated in the Project”, “The participation date of the Project” and “The reforested area”represent the Project, in order to study the influence on income of rural households, and the level of contribution to the influence on the income and its inequality of rural households, in hope of providing suggestions to a new round of policy adjustment for the Project.The research result indicates that: The more time spent for the Project and more reforested area there is, the more income would rural residents make, namely, the Project is starting to have obvious forward impact on the income of rural households; meanwhile, the implementation of the Project broadens the inequality among rural households, and puts a forward contribution to this difference, but the effect of it is comparatively small; this article discusses the rural households of Yangtze River Basin and of Yellow River Basin separately; through comparative study, the influence level on the income and its inequality of rural households in Yellow River Basin by the Project is much more greater on those who live in Yangtze River Basin.