中国式分权、转移支付与居民收入不平等

本文首先采用基尼系数对我国城乡、城镇和农村居民收入不平等程度进行重新测度,然后以政府转移支付为门限变量建立面板门限回归模型,对财政收支分权与居民收入不平等之间关系进行实证检验,结果发现:一是财政收入分权与收入不平等显著负相关,财政支出分权与收入不平等显著正相关;二是财政收支分权对不同类型收入不平等的作用效果存在较大差异.其中,无论是财政收入分权抑或支出分权对收入不平等的政策效应大小依次是城镇居民＞农村居民＞总体居民;三是政府转移支付在不同区制对居民收入不平等的影响呈现显著地非线性特征.即从相对较低的第一区制跨入较高的第二区制时,转移支付对居民收入不平等的影响由负转变为正.本文以上研究结论不仅对于全面构建央地新型政府间财政关系,还可以为促进公平收入分配提供理论依据与决策参考.

Chinese Decentralization,Transfer Payments and Residents' Income Inequality

This paper first re-measures the degree of income inequality among urban residents, rural residents and the overall residents by using the Gini coefficient, and then chooses the intergovernmental fiscal transfer payment as the threshold variable to construct a panel threshold regressive model for the empirical research of the impact of the Chinese-style fiscal decentralization on residents' income inequality.The results are as follows.Firstly, the relationship between fiscal revenue decentralization and the income inequality is always negative while the relationship between fiscal expenditure decentralization and the income inequality is significantly positive.Secondly, there is a great difference with regard to the impacts of fiscal decentralization on various kinds of income inequality.Moreover, be it fiscal revenue decentralization or fiscal expenditure decentralization, the policy effects on income inequality demonstrate a descending order of urban residents, rural residents and the overall residents.Last but not least, the effect of government transfer payment on income inequality shows a nonlinear feature in different regimes.The impact on residents' income inequality significantly alters from negative effect into positive effect when government transfer payment switches to the second regime from the first regime.This paper not only helps to construct a new fiscal relation between central and local governments, but also provides a theoretical basis and policy-making reference for a fairer income redistribution.