精准扶贫、人口流动与地区经济差距

Targeted Poverty Alleviation,Population Mobility and Regional Economic Gap

本文利用县域面板数据结合2000—2020年人口普查资料,系统考察了精准扶贫对地区经济差距的影响,以及人口流动在其中的角色扮演。结果显示,精准扶贫政策的实施确实有助于缩小地区经济差距,但效果相对有限。一个重要的原因在于,精准扶贫存在加速贫困县常住人口流失的倾向,而常住人口流失扩大了地区经济差距。进一步研究显示,贫困县人口流失对地区经济差距的激发作用明显强于其他地区;对于处在城市群或南方地区的贫困县,精准扶贫在降低其与其他地区经济差距中的作用更为明显;对于处在城市群或北方地区的贫困县,精准扶贫导致其流失更多常住人口。本文为认识精准扶贫的经济作用及其要素配置效应,优化后扶贫时代脱贫地区扶持策略提供了经验证据,但本文仅是对精准扶贫经济效应的短期评估,其经济潜力仍需长期观察。

China's targeted poverty alleviation campaign launched in 2013is the largest poverty alleviation battle in human history.By the end of 2020,98.99million rural impoverished people have been lifted out of poverty,832poverty-stricken counties have been completely removed from poverty,and 128thousand poverty-stricken villages have been lifted out of poverty.In addition to eliminating absolute poverty,another important function of poverty alleviation is to alleviate regional development imbalances through industrial support.However,poverty alleviation policies may also induce accelerated population outflow,thereby exacerbating regional economic disparities.There is lacking relevant research to examine the impact of targeted poverty alleviation on regional economic disparities,and to explore the role of population mobility.What to be tested in this paper are threefold.Firstly,we use PSM-DID method to evaluate the impact of targeted poverty alleviation on regional economic disparities.Secondly,employing DID method,the impact of targeted poverty alleviation on the mobility of permanent residents in poverty-stricken counties is identified.Thirdly,the instrumental variable method is used to investigate the impact of population mobility on regional economic disparities.The estimated results show that the implementation of targeted poverty alleviation policies does help narrow the regional economic gap,but the effect is relatively limited.One of the important reasons for this is that targeted poverty alleviation tends to accelerate the loss of permanent residents in poverty-stricken counties,while the loss of permanent residents has significantly widened the regional economic gap.Further evidence shows that the population loss in poverty-stricken counties has a stronger stimulating effect on the regional economic gap than that in other regions.For poor counties in urban agglomerations or southern regions,targeted poverty alleviation plays a more obvious role in reducing the economic gap between them and other regions.For poor counties in urban agglomerations or northern areas,targeted poverty alleviation leads to the loss of more permanent residents.The main contributions of this article are twofold.Firstly,the early evaluation of the impact of targeted poverty alleviation on regional economic disparities has reference value for understanding the regional development balance role of this policy.Secondly,from the perspective of population mobility,exploring the factor allocation and economic impact induced by precision poverty alleviation can provide experience and theoretical basis for optimizing development strategies in impoverished areas.The main policy implications of this article are threefold.Firstly,targeted poverty alleviation is the reconfiguration of social resources in regions and populations.The role of this allocation is to ensure the stable improvement of human capital and to improve the region's ability to undertake industries,supply services,and other aspects.Only by ensuring the development capabilities of both people and regions can the foundation of social development be firmly maintained.Secondly,it must be clarified that poverty-stricken counties,especially rural areas,are not growth poles for economic development.Thirdly,poverty alleviation in poverty-stricken counties and rural areas is an important measure to address China's economic hard landing.But it is necessary to scientifically examine the economic development of poverty-stricken areas,strengthen rational choices in industry selection,and avoid promoting high-tech industries that do not match the local development level.