Exchanging Newly Added Cropland Quotas with the Land for Construction Policy and Urban-Rural Income Gap
The land system with Chinese characteristics has played a crucial role in China's rapid industrialization and urbanization,serving as a significant engine driving China's rapid economic growth.However,this land system has also inhibited the development of a diversified rural economy to a certain extent,widening the gap between urban and rural development and hindering the integrated development of urban-rural areas.Under the most stringent farmland protection and land conservation systems,establishing a unified urban-rural construction land market is a vital institutional arrangement to promote the integrated development of urban-rural areas.Exchanging Newly Added Cropland Quotas with the Land for Construction Policy(the Policy hereafter)is a phased institutional arrangement aimed at promoting a unified construction land market in urban-rural areas at a specific stage of development.This policy is urban-biased and can improve the allocation efficiency of construction land during a particular development phase.However,while facilitating rapid urban development,it remains unclear whether this policy can simultaneously drive rural development and narrow the income gap between urban and rural areas.From the perspective of spatial equilibrium,this paper develops a theoretical model to analyze the impact of the Policy on the urban-rural income gap.The theoretical model demonstrates that the Policy can improve the per capita income of both urban and rural residents.Nevertheless,the Policy has a more pronounced effect on urban residents'income,thereby widening the urban-rural income gap.If the supporting policy of"rural productivity improvement"is implemented alongside the Policy,the per capita income of both urban and rural areas will increase.Moreover,this comprehensive reform can amplify the increase in rural per capita income,narrowing the urban-rural income gap.Furthermore,we employ the difference-in-differences(DID)method and the synthetic control method to evaluate the impact of the Policy and the supporting policy of"rural productivity improvement"on the urban-rural income gap using provincial panel data from 2000 to 2016.The empirical results reveal that since the implementation of the Policy in 2006,the average urban-rural income gap in the pilot provinces has increased by 0.125,reaching 2.820.Following the implementation of the supporting policy of"rural productivity improvement"in 2008,the average urban-rural income gap in Chongqing has decreased by 0.261,reaching 3.043.Finally,from the perspective of urban-rural integration,this paper proposes policy recommendations for establishing a well-developed,unified urban-rural construction land market in the new stage of development.
Exchanging newly added cropland quotas with the land for constructionUrban-rural income gapSpatial balance
万方数据
维普
