中国分区域城镇居民福利水平测度

A Measurement of Chinese Urban Residents' Welfare by Region

随着城镇化的不断深入,为了吸引人才,各省市频现"抢人"大战。其中一线城市的资源越来越集中,医疗教育等隐性福利导致大量人员涌入,但城市的高房价、污染和高强度的工作也降低了人们的生活品质,单纯利用GDP已经无法很好地衡量居民的生活福利水平。文章采用2010-2014年中国家庭追踪调查(CFPS)微观数据对中国城镇居民的终身福利进行了测算,该统计量主要由生命、消费、闲暇和不平等四个部分构成。通过测算结果得出如下结论:人均GDP和城镇居民福利水平的相关性很高,但仅用GDP测量会高估或低估福利水平的不平等性;北京、上海等一线城市的福利水平远超其他省市,即使东部的江、浙省份也仅达到北京的1/3左右,而且这个差距有扩大的趋势;在其他省市,与人均GDP的差异相比,福利水平的区域不平等相对较小,特别是政府通过财政的转移支付降低了不平等程度;福利水平的增长速度比GDP增速更缓慢,而经济下行则会导致福利水平的迅速降低。

With China＇s continuous deepening of urbanization,local governments of different provinces and cities have adopted competitive policies to attract more talented workers. In first-tier cities,one can have a higher payment,a better educational environment and more medical resources at the cost of intensive work,expensive housing,pollution and traffic. This tradeoff lends importance to the task of measuring welfare to live in different cities. While traditionally welfare is highly correlated with GDP per capita,deviations are often large. This paper chooses a more comprehensive statistic to measure the well-being of people in a province by incorporating consumption,leisure,mortality,and inequality in this statistic. Utilizing the detailed householdlevel information from the 2010-2014 China Family Panel Studies（CFPS） data,we calculate the whole life welfare of Chinese urban residents in different provinces. Our empirical results show that：Firstly,measurement using GDP per capita only might overestimate or underestimate the welfare inequality although GDP is highly correlated with the welfare. Secondly,first-tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai are strikingly far ahead of other provinces in terms of comprehensive welfare, even relatively more developed provinces such as Zhejiang and Jiangsu achieve the level of as small as 1/3 of Beijing, and this gap in welfare between first-tier cities and other provinces has been increasingly widened. Thirdly,public finance transfer can reduce the inequality in welfare. Therefore,the comprehensive welfare measurement demonstrates less inequality than the GDP per capital in other regions in China. Fourthly,welfare grows slower than GDP per capita,but shrinks much faster when the economy goes down. This paper contributes to the literature by taking a more theory-based measurement and more microfoundation data to provide comparisons of welfares among different provinces. The results have practical implication for people who choose where to work and live to achieve better well-being.