Urbanization and Urban-Rural Inequality in China: A New Perspective from the Government¡¯s Development Strategy

Justin Lin () and Binkai Chen ()
Additional contact information
Binkai Chen: School of Economics, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing 100083, China

Frontiers of Economics in China-Selected Publications from Chinese Universities, 2011, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-21

Abstract: This paper offers a novel explanation for the lower urbanization rate and great urban-rural inequality in China. Our study reveals that, heavy-industry-oriented development strategy will result in lower urbanization rate and higher urban-rural inequality. The greater the degree of heavy-industryoriented development strategy is, the lower the urbanization rate is, and the higher the urban-rural inequality is. From a dynamic perspective, heavy-industryoriented development strategy reduces the capital accumulation rate, which results in a slower progress of urbanization and a highly persistent urban-rural inequality. The higher the degree of heavy-industry-oriented development strategy, the slower the progress of urbanization, and the longer the urban-rural inequality will last. This mechanism can potentially explain the lower urbanization rate and higher urban-rural inequality in China under a unified framework.

Keywords: development strategy; urbanization; urban-rural inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 O11 O14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://journal.hep.com.cn/fec/EN/10.1007/s11459-011-0119-3 (application/pdf)

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:fec:journl:v:6:y:2011:i:1:p:1-21

Access Statistics for this article

Frontiers of Economics in China-Selected Publications from Chinese Universities is currently edited by LONG Jie

More articles in Frontiers of Economics in China-Selected Publications from Chinese Universities from Higher Education Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Frank H. Liu ().