经济学院知识库

Over the past 40 years of reform and opening up, China's economic development has made unprecedented achievements. Driven by economic growth and the reform of the household registration system, a large number of people have gathered in the developed eastern regions. The characteristics of large-scale population mobility in China are obvious. Data show that by the end of 2019, China's total floating population was as high as 236 million, accounting for one-sixth of the country's total population. At present, China is in a critical period of transformation and development. What impact has such a large-scale floating population had on urban economic growth? Clarifying this relationship will help us to further improve the policies related to population mobility and guide the rational and orderly population mobility and provide theoretical basis and decision-making reference for further promoting urban economic growth and speeding up the construction of urban agglomerations.

On the basis of sorting out relevant research at home and abroad, the paper uses the data of the sixth census and the panel data of 288 prefecture-level cities from 2011 to 2019 to descriptively analyze the population flow and economic growth in China; build a population-economic correlation index and the population-economic disharmony index to analyze the correlation between urban population mobility and economic growth in China; use the fixed effect model to study the impact of population mobility on urban economic growth from the perspectives of population inflow and population outflow, and use the mediation effect model to test population mobility affects urban economic growth by affecting the scale of urban consumption.

The results show that: (1) Population inflow significantly promotes urban economic growth, while population outflow inhibits urban economic growth. (2) The urban economic growth effect of population flow shows obvious regional heterogeneity, that is, eastern cities mainly show population inflow, population flow significantly promotes urban economic growth, and western cities mainly show population outflow. Growth appears to be inhibiting. (3) Population inflow promotes urban economic growth by expanding consumption scale; population outflow cities reduce consumption scale and inhibit urban economic growth. Finally, based on the above analysis, in order to break down the barriers to population mobility and promote steady economic growth, corresponding policy recommendations are put forward.