Research On The Nonlinear Relationship Between Digital Economy And Urban-rural Income Gap

The digital economy is an economic activity with digital information as the key resource,the Internet platform as the main information carrier,the digital technology innovation as the driving force,and a series of new models and formats as the expression.In recent years,with the development of the information technology revolution,human society is gradually entering the era of digital economy,and digital technology has fully penetrated into social and economic life and has become a new driving force for economic growth.On the one hand,the digital economy can improve urban-rural income inequality by breaking down urban-rural information barriers,increasing agricultural productivity,and creating new types of jobs.On the other hand,due to the existence of the digital divide,the development of the digital economy may increase the income gap between urban and rural areas.China’s promotion of common prosperity coincides with the entry into the digital economy era in time,and in terms of balanced sharing and other connotations,so the path to achieve common prosperity must rely on the digital economy form.Therefore,studying the impact of the digital economy on income disparity is conducive to predicting the changes in income distribution in the era of digital economy,achieving the goal of income distribution system reform during the 14 th Five-Year Plan period,and promoting common prosperity.In this regard,this paper first reviews and sorts out the relevant literature of digital economy and income gap.Secondly,after defining the connotation and characteristics of the digital economy,the influence mechanism of the digital economy on the income gap between urban and rural areas is constructed on the basis of existing theories.Subsequently,this paper uses the entropy weight method to measure the development of digital economy in various provinces in China from2013 to 2020,and preliminarily analyzes the development trend of China’s digital economy and the development differences between regions.At the same time,the relevant data of the National Bureau of Statistics were used to measure the Tell index of various provinces in China from 2013 to 2020 to depict the income gap between urban and rural areas in China.Furthermore,this paper uses the balanced panel data from 31 provinces in China from 2013 to 2020 to conduct empirical research in the following three aspects:(1)construct a panel model to study the impact of China’s digital economy on urban-rural income gap,and conduct a series of tests and analyses on the robustness and heterogeneity of the model;(2)construct multiple panel models to analyze the mediating effect of urbanization level on the influence mechanism of income inequality in the digital economy;(3)The moderating role of rural infrastructure and digital inclusive finance in the impact mechanism of digital economy on urban-rural income gap is further studied through the panel regulation utility model.Finally,this paper puts forward feasible countermeasures and suggestions based on the theoretical analysis and empirical results of the full text.The findings in this paper found four conclusions.First,the development of China’s digital economy is uneven,there has always been a digital divide between provinces and regions in China,and there has been an obvious fault in the digital economy index between regions.Second,the urban-rural income gap changes non-linearly with the development of the digital economy,and the relationship between the two is a U-shaped curve.The inflection point value of the U-shaped relationship between the digital economy and the income gap is about 0.574,and by the end of 2020,the digital economy development level of the eastern half of the provinces has approached or exceeded the inflection point,while the central region and the western region are still on the left side of the inflection point and need a long time to develop.Third,the development of the digital economy has an impact on the urban-rural income gap by influencing urbanization.In the early stage of the development of the digital economy,the digital economy can accelerate the urbanization process,but with the further development of the digital economy,the digital divide and other problems will appear,and the urbanization process will be hindered.Fourth,rural Internet infrastructure and digital financial inclusion can regulate the relationship between the development of digital economy and the income gap between urban and rural areas.The development of rural Internet infrastructure and digital inclusive finance will make the inflection point of the U-shaped relationship between the digital economy and the income gap move to the right,when the development of the digital economy crosses the inflection point and begins to play a positive role in the urban-rural income gap,with the development of rural Internet infrastructure construction and digital inclusive finance,the positive effect of the digital economy on the income gap gradually decreases.