A Study On The Impact Of Digital Economy Development On The Urban-rural Income Gap

The digital economy has the advantages of technological innovation,revolutionary and scale,which can break the limitation of time and space,enhance economic interoperability in different regions,improve productivity and promote structural transformation.The digital economy has a great influence on income changes of both urban and rural military and civilians.On the one hand,the digital economy uses information technology to provide a technical basis for agricultural development,and the introduction of intelligent production methods improves both the quality and efficiency of agricultural production,thus promoting farmers’ income growth;on the other hand,the digital economy can improve the productivity of enterprises,thus increasing the labor compensation of employees.Therefore,the digital economy has a double impact on the income of urban and rural residents.In the context of promoting common prosperity in China,what kind of role the digital economy has on the urban-rural income gap becomes a question worth exploring.This paper constructs an index system to evaluate the development level of digital economy from four aspects: digital infrastructure,digital industrialization,industrial digitization and digital economy development environment,and measures the digital economy index of 30 provinces(cities)from 2011-2021;then studies the current situation and spatial and temporal characteristics of digital economy development;then explores the urban-rural income disparity level in China by using the Thayer index to represent the urban-rural The current situation and trend of income disparity in China’s urban and rural areas are explored by using the Theil index to represent the level of income disparity between urban and rural areas,which provides a factual basis for the research of this paper;the mechanism of the digital economy affecting the income disparity between urban and rural residents is explored from multiple perspectives in terms of digital divide,digital dividend,spatial spillover effect and threshold effect,which provides a theoretical basis and research ideas for further empirical tests.An empirical analysis of the impact of digital economy development on the urban-rural income gap in China is conducted by establishing a spatial SDM model and a threshold effect model.The research results show that:(1)from an overall perspective,the development level of China’s digital economy is still not high,but the overall development momentum is strong and maintains a continuous upward trend.The level of urban-rural income gap maintains a stable decreasing trend,and the degree of change of the interval in which the urban-rural income gap is located in each province and city is not significant.(2)From the spatial measurement results,the development of digital economy demonstrates the results of the role of expanding the urban-rural income gap,and has spatial spillover effects.(3)From the results of the threshold model,the more significant is the role of digital economy development in narrowing the urban-rural income gap when the level of industrial structure rationalization and industrial structure advanced as threshold variables is below the threshold and the higher the industrial structure advanced.The following policy recommendations are made based on the research findings on how to narrow the urban-rural income gap through the development of China’s digital economy:(1)Improve digital infrastructure and narrow the digital divide at the first level.(2)Improving the ability to use information to narrow the secondary digital divide.(3)Promote the integration of digital economy into traditional agriculture.(4)Focus on policy coordination in multiple areas of digital economy development.Possible innovations of this paper are:(1)In the selection of indicators,the level of China’s digital economy development is examined from four dimensions and a comprehensive indicator system is constructed,which examines China’s digital economy development more comprehensively.(2)In terms of mechanism of action,the theoretical mechanism is explored from multiple perspectives in terms of digital divide,digital dividend,spatial spillover effect and threshold effect.(3)In terms of empirical analysis,the spatial SDM model and the threshold effect model are constructed to investigate the impact of digital economy on urban-rural income gap more comprehensively,which can be used as reference for relevant policy formulation..