A Study on the Impact of Urban Digitalization on the Urban-rural Income Gap

Abstract

The empirical research topic for this paper is a panel dataset of 31 provinces and urban areas from my country from 2011 to 2020. On the one hand, it gauges the level of regional digital economic development. On the other side, we’ll talk about the structural impact of the level of digitalization on the urban-rural income difference and further debate whether the digital economy helps close or widen this gap. The findings show that the degree of digitization has a significant impact on reducing the income gap between urban and rural areas, while an increase in the Internet coverage index helps do so. However, the overall impact makes the digital economy unfavorable to reducing the income gap between urban and rural areas.