Research On The Impact Of Infrastructure On Urban-rural Income Gap

From the perspective of labor transfer and decision-making,this paper explores the causes and mechanisms of the urban-rural income gap in the role of infrastructure.This paper finds that the labor force decision can affect the effect of infrastructure on the urban-rural income gap.When the transferred labor force chooses to stay in the city,the improvement of infrastructure will affect the urban-rural income gap by promoting the development of urbanization.When migrant workers choose to "return home",the improvement of infrastructure will promote the transfer of agricultural labor to non-agricultural sectors and help narrow the urban-rural income gap.To this end,this paper constructs a theoretical model that includes both the decision of "staying in the city"(measured by urbanization)and the decision of "returning home"(measured by labor force transfer),and conducts an empirical test with the Spatial Durbin method.The empirical results show that the improvement of China's infrastructure can significantly reduce the urban-rural income gap.On the one hand,the improvement of infrastructure can promote labor force transfer to cross-sectoral section and obtain more wage,so the urban-rural income gap is getting smaller and smaller.On the other hand,the improvement of infrastructure can stimulate the development of urbanization,which has a significant negative relationship with the urban-rural income gap.With the progress of urbanization,the per capita labor output gap between urban and rural areas is getting smaller and smaller,and the urban-rural income gap is gradually improving.Finally,in terms of space,China's infrastructure is interrelated to some extent.The improvement of infrastructure in this region may worsen the urban-rural income gap in surrounding areas while improving the local income gap.