Public Data Openness and Urban-Rural Residents'Income Growth:Evidence from the Government Data Open Platform
The coordinated realization of "sustained and stable economic growth" and "urban-rural harmo-nious development" constitutes a pivotal element in achieving common prosperity and aligns with the policy objectives of the Chinese government. This paper leverages a quasi-natural experiment involving the implementation of public data platforms by local governments in Chinese prefecture-level cities to as-sess the positive impact of public data openness on urban-rural residents' income. The findings indicate that government public data openness significantly boosts the disposable income and income growth levels of both urban and rural residents,exerting a more pronounced effect on the income growth rate of rural resi-dents. Mechanism analysis reveals that public data openness facilitates urban-rural income growth by en-hancing the flow of trade goods factors and expediting the transformation of employment structures. Het-erogeneity analysis further demonstrates that public data openness exerts a more significant effect on the in-come growth rate of urban and rural areas in the central and western regions. Moreover,while data open-ness markedly improves income growth rates in both southern and northern regions,it solely enhances co-ordinated income growth between urban and rural areas in the southern region. Thus,local governments should fully realize the substantial economic value of public data openness,and improve the convenience,efficiency,and legality of public data resource utilization so as to ensure that all the residents can benefit from the advantages of the digital economy;they should thoroughly explore the digital opportunities and dividends by public data openness to the advancement of the central and western regions of China,thereby fostering the seamless flow of production factors,promoting employment transformation for urban and ru-ral residents,invigorating entrepreneurial activities,and driving income increase of urban and rural resi-dents;they should accurately grasp the differential effects of public data openness in the southern and northern regions and promote a diversified supply of public data;and they should actively unlock the social welfare value of public data,thus foster the income growth and coordinated income growth between urban and rural residents.
public data opennessurban-rural residents' incomeincome growthurban-rural harmonious development