Regional inequality of resident income and its determinants: A case study of Zhejiang Province, China

Abstract

AbstractThis paper focuses on the regional inequality of resident income in local China at the county or district level, and Zhejiang Province is set as the empirical case. It takes a geographic approach to detect the spatial distribution pattern of resident income, and explore the relationship with regional-specific socio-economic factors. The analytical framework proposed by us has been proved appropriate by the case study. Our study results show that in terms of the resident income level, there exists great regional gap in Zhejiang with the northeast wealthy cluster and much poorer cluster in the southwest. The disposable income of residents is mainly determined by commerce prosperity, urban intensity and technological capacity of local areas, while the effect of regional income, household deposits and industrial production are much less or no significant. Our findings for Zhejiang lead us to suggest that those local states seeking to improve people’s livelihood and income should not solely rely on the industrial or manufacturing expansion, but pay more attention to business environment, urban construction and indigenous innovation. Also, to narrow the significant regional gap of resident income, extra efforts should be made to push the regional cooperation system in economic development.