A Study on Rural Labour Mobility, Population Urbanisation and the Urban-rural Income Gap

Abstract

This paper takes Guangdong Province, China as the research object, and selects the time series data of three periods, 1978-2019, 1978-2004 and 2005-2019 to construct VAR model, Johansen test and impulse response function and other empirical analysis, to examine the causal relationship between the three and study the impact of rural labor mobility, population urbanization on the urban-rural income gap. The study finds that: firstly, rural labour mobility significantly widens the urban-rural income gap, while the accelerated urbanisation of the population effectively reduces the urban-rural income gap; secondly, the impact of rural labour mobility and population urbanisation on the urban-rural income gap has time differences.