land Article Research on the Impact of Land Circulation on the Income Gap of Rural Households: Evidence from CHIP Congjia Huo 1 and Lingming Chen 1,2,* 1 Department of Economics, School of Business, Hunan University of Science and Technology (HNUST), Xiantang 411201, China;
[email protected] 2 Department of Economics & Statistics, School of Economics and Management, Xinyu University (XYU), Xinyu 338004, China * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +86-158-7009-2285 Abstract: With the continued development of the economy, the income gap among Chinese rural households continues to widen. The land system plays a decisive role in developing “agriculture, rural areas and farmers” and land circulation is a factor in the increase in income inequality among farm households. Based on the 2013 China Household Income Project (CHIP), this article used the re-centered influence function (RIF) regression method to empirically test the impact of rural land circulation on the income gap of rural households in China in three regions: the central, eastern and western regions. The quantile regression tested the impact mechanism of income inequality of rural households from the perspective of labor mobility and land circulation. The empirical results showed that land circulation increases the income inequality of rural households. The theoretical mechanism test proved that the dynamic relationship between land circulation and labor mobility increases rural household income. However, this increase has a greater effect on rural households with a high Citation: Huo, C.; Chen, L. Research income and a small effect on rural households with a low income, resulting in a further widening of on the Impact of Land Circulation on the income gap.