Research On The Impact Of China's High-Speed Railway On Urban Income Gap Based On Club Convergence Perspective

With the rapid development of Chinese high-speed railway,its impact on the economy,society and the environment is increasingly significant.Relevant literatures at home and abroad have conducted in-depth research on the impact of high-speed railways on urban economic growth,real estate prices,and balanced development of cities in different regions.However,from the perspective of urban club convergence and diffusion,it is rare to study the impact of high-speed railways on urban groups with different income levels.Based on this,this paper adopts the nonlinear time-varying factor model to identify and determine the group of Chinese city clubs,and then empirically analyzes the convergence effect of high-speed railway accessibility on different urban groups,and draw the conclusion that the impact of high-speed railway is heterogeneity.First of all,at the level of theoretical analysis,this paper analyzes the mechanism of high-speed railways on the convergence of urban income levels and income gaps inside or between urban groups.Based on the endogenous growth theory and the neoclassical regional equilibrium development theory,on the one hand,high-speed railway can bring about positive spillover effect,and promote the economic convergence of urban groups by accelerating the diffusion effect and radiation driving effect generated by the flow of factors,at the same time reduce the urban group.On the other hand,high-speed railways can also bring negative spillover effects,pushing production factors from relatively backward cities to developed cities,leading to the economic diffusion of urban groups and widening the income gap of urban groups.Secondly,a nonlinear time-varying factor model was used to identify and judge the convergence and dispersion of residents'income levels in 277 Chinese cities from 2001 to 2016.The empirical results show that the convergence effect of urban income level does not exist irn the urban groups of the eastern,central,western and northeastern regions in the traditional sense.Therefore,this paper uses the nonlinear time-varying factor model to re-identify and judge the convergence and dispersion of urban per capita income in China,and obtains five convergence clubs.Among them,high-income urban clubs are distributed in the eastern coastal,northeast,and central and western transportation hub cities or resource-rich cities;however,the lower-income urban clubs are mainly distributed in the central and western regions,and different urban groups tend to develop cooperatively.Although the income gap within urban clubs is gradually narrowing,the income gap between urban groups is gradually widening.Thirdly,the ordered logit model is used to analyze the effect of the improvement of high-speed rail accessibility on the formation of convergence club and the marginal effect that affects the grouping of convergence club.The results show that:(1)the level of urban accessibility brought by the high-speed rail,capital input,human capital,industrial structure and government expenditure are the important factors affecting the convergence and dispersion of the five clubs;(2)improving the accessibility of high-speed railway will increase the possibility of city convergence to the city club with higher income level and restrain the possibility of city convergence to the city club with lower income level;(3)the effects of capital investment,human capital and industrial structure on club ranking are consistent with accessibility;(4)on the contrary,the more the government spends,the more the city will converge to low-income clubs.However,the influence of population mobility and regional openness is not obvious.Finally,the urban income gap within and between clubs is taken as the research object to consider the effect of the improvement of high-speed rail accessibility on the income gap within and between urban groups.The empirical analysis of panel data shows that the improvement of urban accessibility brought by high-speed rail can widen the income gap between the five club groups and the average income gap between all the cities and their clubs.Because of the difference in the number and income level of urban groups within the club,the accessibility of high-speed rail has heterogeneous influence on the income gap within the club.The improved accessibility has widened the income gap in the first and third clubs and narrowed the income gap in the second and fourth clubs.