Ecologically-Sensitive China Regional Human Development Index Construction And Spatial Convergence Research

In 1990,the United Nations Development Programme(UNDP)put forward the Human Development Index(HDI)from a multi-dimensional perspective,which comprehensively judges regional development level and social progress from the dimensions of health,education and income.It has been widely recognized by the international community,and provides important guidance for governments to formulate corresponding development strategies.China's basic public service system has a high degree of consistency with HDI in thought and content,and studying China's regional coordinated development is equivalent to exploring China's regional human development issues.However,due to the lack of consideration of ecological and environmental dimensions in the construction process,HDI has attracted some criticism while being widely used.Ecological civilization construction is the most basic condition for human survival,the most effective means to benefit people's livelihood,and the most important driving force to improve the level of human development.Therefore,it is necessary to construct Ecologically-sensitive China Regional Human Development Index(ECHDI)to truly and objectively reflect China's regional human development status.The construction of ECHDI integrates the idea of sustainable development into human development,enriches the theoretical connotation of human development,expands the research scope and ideas of human development,and makes beneficial supplement and extension to the existing research on regional gap,so as to improve the effectiveness and accuracy of the research.Meanwhile,ECHDI was used to conduct a comprehensive assessment of human development in China.Combining Geoda,ArcGIS,Stata and MATLAB software,using Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis(ESDA),Standard Deviational Ellipse(SDE)and spatial econometrics to analyze and discuss the spatial differences,evolution trends and convergence characteristics of regional human development in China from the perspective of space.On this basis,policy suggestions are provided for narrowing regional human gap and easing regional development contradictions from the perspective of establishing comprehensive human development concept,implementing differentiated development strategy according to local conditions,and establishing inter-regional cooperation and governance mechanism.Firstly,this paper constructs the HDI from the dimensions of health,education and income,and builds the Ecological Input Index(EII)by combining the dimensions of resource consumption and pollution emissions.It also integrates EII into the HDI by referring to Atkinson's method of measuring social inequality to build the Ecologically-sensitive China Regional Human Development Index(ECHDI).The regional human development assessment based on HDI found that China's regional human development level has been improving,and the regional gap has become more and more prominent.From the perspective of geographical distribution,human development in China presents a stepped distribution of "high in the east and low in the west".Guizhou,Yunnan,Tibet and Qinghai provinces have formed continuous zones of low human development.The regional ecological environment assessment based on EII found that China's ecological environment was deteriorating,and the momentum of ecological environment deterioration was alleviated after 2010.There are obvious regional differences in ecological environment between regions and within regions,and different regions face different ecological environment problems.The regional comprehensive human development assessment based on ECHDI found that ecological environment is an important factor affecting regional human development in China.The punishment scope of ecological environment for human development is expanding and the punishment intensity is deepening gradually.The situation of regional human development in China is not as optimistic as reflected by HDI.Secondly,this paper uses Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis(ESDA)to measure the spatial correlation of regional human development in China,and then uses Standard Deviational Ellipse(SDE)to explore the spatial evolution trend of regional human development in China from the perspective of spatial distribution center,direction and scope.It is found that Global Moran's I is all positive and significant,and about three-quarters of the provinces under the Moran scatter diagram and the Four-quadrant clustering results are located in HH and LL,which indicates that the spatial correlation and difference of regional human development in China coexist,and there is a spatial clustering distribution.HH is mainly concentrated in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei,Yangtze River Delta and eastern coastal areas,LH is mainly concentrated in the middle,LL is mainly concentrated in the west,HL is mainly concentrated in the southwest,central and northeast.Overall,the spatial distribution pattern of regional human development in China is relatively stable,with some spatial locking and path-dependence.The overall trend analysis shows that the spatial direction of human development in China has obvious differentiation,which is manifested as high east and low west,high north and south,low central,high northeast,low southwest,high southeast and low northwest.The analysis of standard deviational ellipse shows that,from the spatial distribution center,the ellipse center gradually moves to the southwest.From the direction of spatial distribution,the major axis of the ellipse moves from northeast to southwest and remains unchanged.From the perspective of spatial distribution,the ellipse tends to flatten.From the variation of ellipse area and rotation of azimuth Angle,it is found that there is a big gap in the growth rate of ECHDI value in each region inside the ellipse as well as inside and outside the ellipse.Differences in the growth rate of human development will further widen the regional gap in human development in China,and the unbalanced spatial pattern will remain unchanged for a long time to come.Finally,the spatial panel model is established to test the absolute ? convergence of ECHDI and each dimension index to analyze the changing trend of regional gap of human development in China.By means of conditional ? convergence,the influencing factors of convergence are further explored from the perspectives of economy,society and environment.The results of a convergence and absolute ?convergence analysis show that there is no significant a convergence in human development in China,but there is obvious absolute ? convergence.The mismatch between economic growth rate and ecological environment,the imitation effect brought by positive spatial spillover effect and the“learning by doing" effect are the main reasons for the absolute(3 convergence of human development in China.The spatial effects and the convergence characteristics of the ecological environment have improved the convergence speed of human development in China.Through conditional convergence analysis,it is found that the conditional ? convergence characteristics exist in the whole country,the eastern region and central region.Urbanization rate,trade freedom and education investment play a positive role in the convergence of human development in China,while medical and health investment and environmental regulation play a negative role,and environmental regulation has the greatest negative effect on convergence.