A Study On The Impact Of Rural Collective Property Rights System Reform On Urban-rural Income Gap

Common prosperity is a key principle of Chinese socialism and can only be achieved by improving economic development and reducing the urban-rural income gap.In recent years,the urban-rural income gap in China has remained at a relatively high level.The long-term trend of excessive urban-rural income gap has had a greater impact on the efficiency of economic operation and the well-being of residents,thus restricting the realization of the goal of common prosperity in China.To narrow the urban-rural income gap,the government initiated the rural collective property rights system reform(RCPRSR)in 2015.The RCPRSR can prompt collective economic organizations to give full play to the property rights and interests of collective assets,empower farmers’ assets with powers and functions,increase farmers’ opportunities to participate in economic activities,and raise their income levels.However,the effectiveness of the RCPRSR in reducing the urban-rural income gap and its underlying mechanism is still under debate among scholars.This thesis employs the RCPRSR as a quasi-natural experiment to examine its impact on China’s urban-rural income gap.The thesis uses panel data from 1984 counties in 24 provinces across China from 2010 to 2019 and manually collected data on the list of pilot areas of the RCPRSR.The difference-in-differences method(DID)and propensity score matching difference-in-differences method(PSM-DID)are used to evaluate the policy’s impact,explore its mechanism of action,and analyze the heterogeneity of its policy effect among different regions.The empirical results of the DID model and the PSM-DID model indicate that the RCPRSR can reduce the urban-rural income gap.Excluding the influence of the samples from municipalities directly under the central government,adjusting the sample window period,changing the method of measuring the urban-rural income gap,excluding the influence of abnormal values,and changing the PSM method have all been verified by a series of robustness tests to confirm this finding.The mechanism analysis shows that the RCPRSR reduces the ruralurban income gap mainly through two mechanisms of action: industrial structure optimization and improvement of agricultural mechanization.Further regional heterogeneity analysis reveals significant inter-regional differences in the impact of the RCPRSR on the urban-rural income gap.The reform only has a significant effect on reducing the urban-rural income gap in the eastern region,while the effect on reducing the urban-rural income gap in the central,western,and northeastern regions is not notable.Based on the research results,this thesis proposes several recommendations.Firstly,there is a need to increase promotion efforts for the RCPRSR and implement measures to consolidate and improve its impact.Secondly,to boost the promotion of industrial structure,there is a need to improve the management mechanism and policy support system for the improvement of rural industrial structure.And enhancing the subsidy policy for the purchase of agricultural machinery and improving the training mechanism for the use of the machinery to enhance the level of agricultural mechanization.Thirdly,to address the differentiated problems that exist in the eastern,central,western,and northeastern regions of China,there is a need to formulate specific collective economic development improvement programs.These programs should be tailored to the specific needs and circumstances of each region.