Does Digital Inclusive Finance Narrow the Urban-Rural Income Gap through Primary Distribution and Redistribution?

Hongbo Zhao, Xiao Zheng and Lin Yang
Additional contact information
Hongbo Zhao: School of Business, Shandong University, Weihai 264209, China
Xiao Zheng: School of Business, Shandong University, Weihai 264209, China
Lin Yang: School of Business, Shandong University, Weihai 264209, China

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 4, 1-19

Abstract: Excessive income gap (IG) between urban and rural areas harms the quality of economic development, and imbalanced primary distribution (PD) as well as redistribution (RD) are considered to be the main factors contributing to the urban–rural IG. Does digital Inclusive Finance (DIF) affect the urban–rural IG through PD and RD? This paper empirically studies the impact of digital inclusive finance on Chinese urban–rural IG from the perspectives of PD and RD respectively, through updated and comprehensive provincial data, using the method of mediating effect. The results show that DIF narrowed China’s urban–rural IG with regional differences. Meanwhile, DIF also narrowed the urban-rural IGs in PD and RD, both with regional heterogeneity. Moreover, narrowing the urban–rural IG of PD exerted a mediating effect on the general urban–rural IG, while narrowing the urban–rural IG of RD did not. The results are helpful for DIF to better narrow urban–rural IG. Therefore, countermeasures are put forward for DIF to apply from the perspectives of PD and RD.

Keywords: digital inclusive finance (DIF); urban–rural income gap; primary distribution (PD); redistribution (RD); mediating effect model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/4/2120/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/4/2120/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:4:p:2120-:d:748151

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().