The Study of the Rural-urban Income Inequality——a View from Residents' Income Resource

In the developing process of social economy, there must be a close relationship between the changes of resource and structure of the rural people's income and the development of the income inequality between the rural and the urban, especially in some typical areas with the problems concerned. This paper is a tentative research on this relationship based on the analysis of rural-urban income inequality in Zhejiang Province from the point of view of the residents' income resource. Index of GE and its factors decomposition method are popular in the research of income inequality, especially in the research of rural-urban income inequality. This paper first uses the GE region decomposition method to analyze different regions' income inequality and their development in Zhejiang Province. Then it uses the factors decomposition method to analyze different income resources' contribution on the rural-urban income inequality and the contribution's change in the sample time series. Finally, it explains the rural-urban income inequality in Zhejiang Province in view of the income structure. The result of the GE calculation indicates that the total income inequality and the rural-urban income inequality have been increasing since 1990's. Furthermore, the results of factors decomposition of the rural-urban inequality indicate: wage income increases rural-urban income inequality because wage income is the main income for urban residents; family management income is different with wage income, which means that it decreases the rural-urban income inequality, because family management income is the main income for the rural residents; because of the dualistic structure between the rural and the urban and the discriminating institution of income redistribution, the transfer income's contribution to rural-urban income inequality is obviously increasing the rural-urban income inequality; property income's contribution of rural-urban income inequality is not very clear because of its low proportion, but it basically increases the rural-urban income inequality.