Title: The Effect of Labor Mobility on the Urban-Rural Income Gap—Based on 272 Prefecture-Level City Panel Data in China
Abstract: The current income gap situation between urban and rural areas is still one of the important problems on the road of China's economic development; based on the panel data of 272 prefecture-level cities in China from 2003 to 2012 and the theory of labor mobility, this paper uses the quantile regression and OLS regression to study the relationship between labor mobility and urban-rural income gap. The empirical results show that: labor mobility can effectively narrow the income gap between urban and rural areas, and with the increase in the number of quantile points, this reduction effect increases. The impact of industrial structure and industrialization level has changed at different quantile points, but the investment in science and education, the scale of financial development, and the impact of social security have not changed.