A Study Of Regional Differences,convergence And Mechanisms Of Influence Of Income Inequality Among Rural Residents In China

Rural poverty and income inequality remain an enormous challenge to world development.Since its reform and opening up in 1978,China has created remarkable economic growth and extraordinary rural poverty reduction,which in turn happens to provide a good laboratory for studying global rural income inequality and has successfully attracted strong attention from scholars and policy makers.Moreover,in China’s national context,influenced by the weak rural foundation,natural resource endowment and regional differences in conditions,raising farmers’ income and reducing internal disparities remain one of the core tasks of the country in consolidating the results of poverty eradication and implementing agricultural and rural work in the coming period.Therefore,in the current dual context of slowing down economic growth,high income disparity and unbalanced regional development,exploring the problem of rural income inequality in China is not only important for consolidating the results of poverty eradication and comprehensive implementation of rural revitalization development,but also provides a good case study for countries around the world to seek solutions to the problem of rural income inequality.This study intends to study the regional differences,convergence and impact mechanisms of rural income inequality in China based on the major historical point of the perfect conclusion of the war against poverty in 2020,and takes the period of 2001-2020,which is divided by two poverty alleviation and development programs,as the research stage.Among them,the spatio-temporal pattern of rural income inequality in China is portrayed based on the standard deviation ellipse and gravity models,the regional differences of rural income inequality are explored using the Dagum Gini coefficient and Kernel kernel density estimation,and the convergence mechanism of rural income inequality is investigated deeply based on the σ convergence,β convergence and club convergence models,and finally the spatial panel econometric model is applied to investigate the impact mechanism of rural income inequality The spatial panel econometric model is finally used to empirically test the impact mechanism of rural income inequality.The research results show that:(1)In terms of time series,the Gini coefficient generally increases and then decreases,fluctuates and rises from2001 to 2010,and continues to decrease from 2011 to 2020;and the income distribution obviously shows a rightward trend,especially the rightward shift is larger from 2011 to 2020.(2)spatially,there is a significant spatial convergence of rural income,i.e.,the inequality problem can be effectively mitigated;(3)in terms of time stage and influencing factors,rural income from 2011 to 2020 shows a convergence trend,and economic growth and social security capability are the influencing factors of its convergence;(4)in terms of regional level and influencing factors,the convergence rate in 2011-2020 is highest in the west,followed by the east and lowest in the center;economic growth is the driving force of the convergence in the east and the center,while the education level is the key to the convergence in the west.Therefore,given the evolution of income inequality in rural China,deepening policy reforms and coordinating the joint action of multiple factors to further improve social welfare levels may be the most effective way to reduce rural income inequality.Compared with the existing academic results,the contributions of the article are mainly related to the following three aspects.(1)The article focuses on the internal differences of rural income in China,which provides a research paradigm and analytical framework for studying regional balanced development and enhances the scientific validity and reliability of income inequality measurement.(2)Comparing the trends of rural income inequality at two different policy levels and comparing the changes of rural income inequality over time at different time and regional stages is of outstanding theoretical significance.(3)The main logic of "normative-quantitative-empirical" and the incorporation of spatial effects into the analysis of impact mechanisms make the research process more scientific and closer to reality.