Research On Residents' Income Polarization And Spatial Evolution In The Yangtze River Delta

With the steady progress of China's reform and opening up,issues such as the widening of residents' income and the gap between the rich and the poor,and the unreasonable income structure have gradually become hot issues.In recent years,the distribution of social income has shown "M-shaped" characteristics,that is,the scale of high-and low-income groups has continued to expand,and the proportion of middleincome groups has greatly reduced.The stable and growing middle-income group has important reference significance for maintaining social stability and promoting economic growth..Inequality indicators have limited explanations for the above phenomena,and research on income polarization has emerged.Income polarization describes the process in which social groups gradually gather locally,with high homogeneity within each subgroup and greater heterogeneity between groups.This paper uses the household income data of residents in the Yangtze River Delta from 2010 to 2018 to measure the polarization,and then disassemble the polarization indicators from the perspectives of income sources and groupings,and combine the spatial correlation analysis to explain the evolution of income polarization.The calculation results of income polarization show that urban and rural areas have similar changes in income polarization.The polarization level first increases,then decreases and then increases.According to the polarization index,it can be judged that the global polarization level and the polarization level in rural areas are generally higher than that in urban areas.area.According to the division of administrative regions in the Yangtze River Delta,it is found that the differences and polarization between the four geographical regions show a trend of increasing first and then decreasing.The polarization index is decomposed according to the source of income.Wage income and transfer income are important sources of household income.The decomposition results show that the two promote the increase in polarization;property income inhibits polarization.The identification-distance decomposition of the DER polarization index shows that the influence of alienation between groups is mainly reflected in urban areas,and income polarization in rural areas is mainly affected by the sense of identity within the group.Based on the decomposition of population groups,it can be found that rural residents contribute more to income polarization than urban residents,and the urban-rural income gap will have a greater impact on income polarization in 2010-2016.An analysis of the spatial correlation between the urban agglomerations in the Yangtze River Delta reveals that the income is high in the southeast and low in the northwest.Carrying out global spatial autocorrelation calculations,it is found that the income variables appear as high-income groups and low-income groups in the spatial scope,showing non-random distribution.Moreover,high-income groups are mainly concentrated in coastal cities such as Jiangsu and Zhejiang,and low-income groups are mainly concentrated in northwest Anhui.The significant correlation between regions has reduced the spatial disparity of agglomeration areas,which is one of the factors that have contributed to the increase in income polarization in the Yangtze River Delta.