Impact Of Labor Mobility On Rural-urban Income Gap

Over the past 40 years of reform and opening up,China’s economic development has made great achievements,and the income and living standards of urban and rural residents have been greatly improved,but the income gap between urban and rural areas is expanding.How to effectively alleviate the income gap between urban and rural areas has become the focus of academic circles.Most of the existing studies study the effect of industrial structure change and labor mobility on urban-rural income gap separately,and a few scholars have included the interaction of the two into the analysis,research on the two dimensions about industrial structure advancement and rationalization and their regional differences in the interaction is even rarer.In this paper,labor mobility and industrial structure change and their two dimensions are included in the same analysis system,and the impact of labor mobility on urban-rural income gap is investigated from the perspective of the difference of industrial structure change in different regions.Based on the existing research and relevant classical theories,this paper analyzes the impact mechanism of labor mobility,industrial structure change and their interaction on urban-rural income gap,and the mechanism of regional industrial structure change difference,and puts forward research hypotheses.Then,it uses panel data of 31 provinces and cities in China from 2005 to 2019,fixed effect FE model and group regression to analyze the proposed model The research hypotheses are tested.The empirical results prove the hypothesis that the upgrading of industrial structure will expand the income gap between urban and rural areas,labor mobility will narrow the income gap between urban and rural areas,the interaction between labor mobility and the upgrading of industrial structure will expand the income gap between urban and rural areas,and the interaction between labor mobility and the rationalization of industrial structure will narrow the income gap between urban and rural areas.At the same time,it shows that the higher the level of industrial structure,the greater the labor mobility in the eastern and central regions,and the widening of the income gap between urban and rural areas;the higher the level of rationalization,the less significant the effect of labor mobility in the eastern and western regions on the income gap between urban and rural areas However,in the central region,labor mobility will further alleviate the income inequality between urban and rural areas.Finally,according to the empirical results and the actual situation,this paper puts forward some suggestions on speeding up the labor flow,promoting the upgrading of industrial structure and adjusting measures to local conditions.