Abstract
Based on the convergence theory of economic growth, this paper extends this concept to the human development index and carries out an empirical analysis of regional development in China between 1997 and 2006. Our research shows that the conditional convergence has been identified. Investment in fixed assets, government expenditure on education, health and infrastructure construction have positive effects on regional convergence of social development. Population weighted analysis of human development index provides support for weak convergence amongst provinces. Analysis of dynamics of regional distribution reveals the club convergence, which indicate two different convergence states. Central China is in the shade and lags behind, giving rise to the so-called “central downfall”. To solve this problem, the “Rise of Central China” Plan is necessary to promote the connection between coastal and inland regions of China and reduce the regional development gap.
Highlights
In recent years, with China’s rapid economic growth, issues of regional disparity in China have attracted the attention of scholars at home and abroad and been discussed in detail
By applying the theory of convergence and concept of inequality to study the evolution of social development, we analyze regional inequality in social development in China both theoretically and empirically .First of all, empirical results of methods of β and σ convergence show evidence of weak absolute convergence and conditional convergence of provincial human development
When the population of provinces are taken into account, the results show that the change of Gini coefficient and Theil index is small in spite of the downward trend
Summary
With China’s rapid economic growth, issues of regional disparity in China have attracted the attention of scholars at home and abroad and been discussed in detail. Literatures both at home and abroad on regional disparities from an empirical perspective adopted two ways: one was to validate the convergence hypothesis (Barro [29], Mankiw [30].); the other was to measure the inequality and analyze its dynamic changes (Quah [31], Sala-i-Martin [32]) Goals of those two methods were consistent, which were to test whether the income distribution of developed and underdeveloped regions was equal or polarized. The main structure of this paper is as follows: in Section 2, we use the convergence theory to analyze differences in the human development index after a brief review of literature; Section 3 makes an empirical study of convergence of social development of China’s 31 provinces and analysis of influencing factors of social development through the method of β and σ convergence; in Section 4, regional inequality in social development of China is measured, and its dynamic changes are further discussed and explored; Section 5 presents corresponding conclusions and policy recommendations
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