Research On The Impact Of Digital Economy On Urban-rural Income Disparity

The report of the 20 th National Congress pointed out that the development of the digital economy should be accelerated to promote the high-quality development of China’s economy,and at the same time,the report also pointed out that broadening channels to increase the income of urban and rural residents and promoting farmers’ income is the main way to narrow the income gap.The digital economy is transforming into a new international competitiveness,and the impact mechanism of the digital economy on the income gap between urban and rural areas has gradually become a hot spot.Based on previous research,this paper defines the concept of digital economy and constructs an index system,empirically analyzes its impact on the income gap between urban and rural areas,and puts forward economic countermeasures to solve the current excessive income gap between urban and rural areas from the perspective of digital economy.This paper combs the understanding of digital economy by previous scholars and institutions,and constructs an index system of digital economy development level from four aspects: digital infrastructure,digital industry,integrated application,and sustainable development.By selecting the panel data of 30 provinces and cities in China from 2003 to 2020,a U-shaped panel model is constructed to explore the impact of the development of the digital economy on the urban-rural income gap in China.At the same time,taking into account other factors that may affect the income gap between urban and rural areas in China,the level of economic development,industrial structure,urbanization,level of technological development,and education level are added to the model as control variables;On this basis,further explore regional,urban-rural heterogeneity and threshold effect analysis with economic development level and digital economy level as threshold variables.The empirical conclusions are as follows:(1)The impact of digital economy development on the income gap between urban and rural areas shows a "positive U-shaped" change trend,and China is currently on the left side of the inflection point of the U-shaped curve,and the digital economy is manifested as narrowing the urban-rural income gap;(2)From the perspective of regional heterogeneity,in the central and western regions,the effect of the digital economy on narrowing the income gap between urban and rural areas gradually expanded,while the eastern region showed an expanding effect.(3)From the perspective of urban-rural heterogeneity,the marginal income effect of digital economy on rural residents is slightly greater than that of urban residents;(4)Taking the economic development level as the threshold variable,it is found that the development of digital economy has a dual effect on the income gap between urban and rural residents in China,and its role in expanding the income gap gradually narrows when the economic development level is lower than the second threshold,and when the degree of economic development is high,it shows the effect of narrowing the income gap;Finally,based on the empirical results,this paper puts forward policy suggestions on how to improve the development level of China’s digital economy and narrow the income gap.