The Impacts of Rural Labor Migration on China's Economy and Regional Disparities

This study constructed Computable General Equi-librium(CGE) model of four-regions and six-departments to analyze the impacts of rural labor migration on economic growth and regional disparities in China, based on 2000 and 2007 China’s Regional Input-Output Tables. The results showed that it had made China’s GDP respectively grow from 1.054% in 2000 to 5.565% in 2007.The impacts had the most obvious effects on the eastern region’s economic growth, the largest growth rate on the central region’s economic growth, and a negative-to-positive transformation on the western region’s economic growth. Compared with rural labor migration within regions, it widened gap among regions in 2007,making the disparities of eastern-central, eastern-western and central-western respectively grow by 5.738%,6.668% and 12.627%. These disparities were much higher than those in 2000.Meanwhile the migration led value added in nonagricultural sectors to increase and added value in agricultural sector to decrease. Also it left the greater impact on the service sector of the central region and greatest impact on the heavy industrial sectors of the western region.