Open Government Data and the Urban–Rural Income Divide in China: An Exploration of Data Inequalities and Their Consequences

Lu Tan () and Jingsong Pei
Additional contact information
Lu Tan: School of Economics and Management, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China
Jingsong Pei: School of Economics and Management, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 13, 1-18

Abstract: Amidst excitement for the data revolution’s potential benefits, concerns mount over its negative impact as unequal data distribution, access, and use widen disparities between individuals and groups, highlighting the urgent need for advanced theoretical and empirical frameworks. This study investigated the impact of open government data (OGD) on the urban–rural income divide in China. Our theoretical analysis shows that the nonrival nature of data initially widens the urban–rural income divide before eventually mitigating it, resulting in an inverted U-shaped relationship. Using a multiperiod difference-in-differences specification, we found that OGD widened the urban–rural income divide between 2010 and 2019. Furthermore, cities with initially wider urban–rural income divides experienced a greater impact from OGD in expanding this divide. These findings provide valuable insights in the role of open data in addressing income inequality, and contribute to our understanding of data inequalities in the context of the data revolution.

Keywords: digital economy; open government data; rural China; data divide; income divide; data for development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/13/9867/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/13/9867/ (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:15:y:2023:i:13:p:9867-:d:1175819

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 ().