Human Capital Investment Inequality and Rural–Urban Income Gap: Evidence from China
Advances in Pacific Basin Business Economics and Finance
ISBN: 978-1-78743-410-3, eISBN: 978-1-78743-409-7
Publication date: 15 September 2017
Abstract
This paper examines the impact of residents’ human capital investment inequality on the urban–rural income gap, using China’s provincial panel data from 1997 to 2013. The results show that, at the national level as well as at the regional level, residents’ overall human capital investment inequality has a positive significant impact on the urban–rural income gap. In addition, the impact of overall human capital investment inequality increased monotonically from the eastern region inward to the western region. In terms of the relative impact of each component of human capital investment inequality on the urban–rural income gap, migration investment inequality appears to have the greatest impact at the national level, whereas health investment inequality has the greatest impact on the urban–rural income gap in the eastern region, and education investment inequality exhibits the greatest impact in the central and western regions. We also investigate the impact of human capital investment inequality on the urban–rural income gap over different periods. The results show that residents’ overall human capital investment inequality had a positive impact on the urban–rural income gap in the period 1997–2008, but the impact rapidly shrunk in 2009–2013. Furthermore, the impact of residents’ health investment inequality on the urban–rural income gap shows a downward trend, and the impact of residents’ education investment inequality trended slightly upward from 1997 to 2008, and then rapidly shrunk in 2009–2013. Finally, the impact of residents’ migration investment inequality was only significant in 1997–2002.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
This work is supported by “the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities” (No: 2722013JC013), China. We thank valuable comments made by Ahmed Al Aabodi, Patrice Anderson, Abrar Bagalb, Dweetobotee Brahma, Yizhou Chen, Joseph Wu, and Xiyao Xiang.
Citation
Yang, X. and Huang, W.-c. (2017), "Human Capital Investment Inequality and Rural–Urban Income Gap: Evidence from China", Advances in Pacific Basin Business Economics and Finance (Advances in Pacific Basin Business, Economics and Finance, Vol. 5), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 151-172. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2514-465020170000001007
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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