The Effects Of Land Finance On The Income GAP Between Urban And Rural Residents

Since the tax reform in 1996,land finance has expanded rapidly.Although land finance has provided indispensable financial support for China's urbanization construction,the excessive reliance of local governments on land finance has also led to many negative effects.Among them,many scholars hold a view that the widening income gap between urban and rural residents is closely related to China's land system,household registration system,and government behavior.Therefore,as the important tool for urbanization construction and the link between urban and rural land market,land finance also will make an effect on the income gap between urban and rural residents,which is worth discussing further.This thesis first estimates the scale of land finance in 31 provinces in China during 2004-2016 based on the generalized definition of land finance.Meanwhile,considering the differences in the invisible welfare of urban and rural residents and the differences in consumption levels,we calculated the more objective income gap between urban and rural residents.Afterwards,based on related theories,this thesis analyzes the impact of land finance on the income gap between urban and rural residents from the perspectives of urban-rural dual land system,government resource allocation and urbanization,and then through the fixed effect panel model and the panel threshold model,the effect degree and effect mechanisms are tested empirically.The results show that:(1)Land finance has complex multiple effects on the income gap between urban and rural residents according to different income categories.But on the whole,land finance has a positive impact on the income gap between urban and rural residents in China,and this effect mainly depends on the increase in wage income of rural residents brought by the development of infrastructure construction and the secondary industry in the process of local urbanization;(2)In the provinces with higher urban-rural duality and more serious urban bias,the negative impact of land finance on the income gap between urban and rural residents is more obvious,but in provinces with higher urbanization level,the positive impact of land finance on income disparity between urban and rural residents is more pronounced;(3)With the different economic level and urbanization level,the influence of land finance on income gap between urban and rural residents has threshold effect,and now most provinces are in the middle and backward economic and urbanization level,where land finance has asignificant positive impact on the income gap between urban and rural residents.Acoording to the above conclusions,this thesis puts forward the following three suggestions:(1)Accelerate the land marketization,strengthen the role of the market in allocating land resources;(2)Improve the structure of local fiscal revenue and expenditure,and reduce the dependence of local governments on land transfer payments;(3)Change the assessment item of official and correct the urban bias of government resource allocation.