Research On The Relationship Between Urban And Rural Education Inequality And Urban-rural Income Disparity In China

Education is the most common and most important way to accumulate human capital in China.The irrational allocation of urban and rural education resources and the difference in urban and rural education levels will to a certain extent lead to urbanrural income gaps.The urban-rural income gap may also further induce educational resources to cities and towns.This paper takes the relationship between urban and rural education inequality and the income gap between urban and rural areas as the research object.Meanwhile it elaborates the mechanism of action between the two from the perspective of theory and demonstration.The main research contents of this paper are as follows:Theoretically,this paper expands on the intergenerational overlap model of Galor and Zeria(1993)in three aspects.Firstly,this paper introduces the urban-rural dualistic system features into the model;Secondly,this paper subdivides the individual educational choices and examinines different levels of the role of education in income distribution;And then this paper discusses the changes in the labor market and the impact of government policies on the balance of the model.Through theoretical derivation,this paper puts forward three major assumptions: First of all,the initial income distribution gap between urban and rural residents will affect the individual's educational choices,which will result in the differentiation of urban and rural labor income;Secondly,the phenomenon that urban and rural residents' income distribution gap expands through educational selection will be further intensified by passing through the inter-industry overlap,eventually resulting in the fragmentation of the urban-rural income gap.Thirdly,changes in the labor market and government policies have a certain impact on urban-rural education inequality and urban-rural income gap.Based on the assumptions made by the theoretical model,this paper uses simultaneous equations and distributed lag models to study the relationship between urban and rural education inequality and urban-rural income gap.The results show that the short-term effects between urban and rural education inequality and the urban-rural income gap is time-varying and unstable,because of slow returns of education investment,rural residents' thinking patterns difficult to change,labor market segmentation and the household registration system.However,in the long run,there is a stable mutual interaction between the two.The deterioration of urban and rural income gaps will increase the inequality of urban and rural education,while the deterioration of urban-rural education will also widen the income gap between urban and rural areas.Besides,the expansion of education,government policies and economic structure and other variables will have an impact on urban and rural income gap and urban and rural education inequality;In addition,compared with central and eastern regions,the difference between education distribution and income distribution in urban and rural areas is more pronounced in the western region.Based on theoretical and empirical analysis,this paper proposes relevant policies from the perspectives of narrowing urban-rural education inequality and restraining urban-rural income gap.