Does the New Urbanization Policy Promote Residents’ Consumption Equality in China?

Abstract

The aim of this study is to explore the policy of new urbanization proposed by the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China on consumption equality between rural migrants and the urban population. This study adopts the data of the 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) and uses the difference-in-differences (DID) method to find that the new urbanization policy significantly promotes the consumption equality of residents and that the degree of consumption equality of residents participating in urbanization increases by about 1.5% after the implementation of the new policy. In addition, this study finds that household income equality is the channel of the new urbanization policy that affects household consumption equality. The conclusions are found to be robust and effective after several tests are conducted.