Declining marginality is an important idea in economics and can prove that there is also convergence in the driving effect of economic development on urbanization。
The correlation between the level of urbanization in a country and the pattern of economic development is evident in the fact that there is a logarithmic curve between the level of urbanization and GDP per capita. In the 1970s and 1980s, this was demonstrated by channari, mondays and others. This issue has also been studied. In other words, at different stages of economic development, the contribution of economic development to the level of development of urbanization is different; when the level of economic development has reached a considerable level, further growth in per capita GDP (GDP, below) will no longer lead to a significant and sustained increase in the level of urbanization. Figure 1 presents a model of the logarithmic relationship between urbanization rates and per capita GDP based on 1999 data from countries around the world。
For a large country like my own, the relationship between the level of economic development and the level of urbanization in the various regions within it is also largely in line with this logarithmic curve. An analysis of the rate of urbanization and per capita GDP in the country's provinces in 2000 is relatively high, with a related coefficient of 0. 941, which is significant at 0. 01 levels, the relationship curve shown in figure 2。
The general correlation between urbanization rates and GDP per capita shows that urbanization rates will gradually increase in a country or region as GDP per capita increases. However, this driving effect is diminishing as per capita GDP levels rise. This is reflected in a gradual contraction of the curve and a gradual decrease in the slope of the points on the curve。
The change in per capita GDP relative to the urbanization rate of the population (ulr/GDP is the slope of points on the curve) as a measure of the marginal driving effect of economic development on urbanization is diminishing. As figure 3 shows, at the beginning of economic development, per capita GDP growth was relatively important for the marginal drivers of urbanization, which will gradually diminish as the economy develops, as shown in figure 3。
This is because, during the take-off phase of urbanization, economic growth is driven by the incremental expansion of the non-agricultural sector, with population transfers mainly between the agricultural population and the non-agricultural population — the transformation of the agricultural population to the industrial and service population, and hence the impact of urbanization; when economic development reaches a certain level, economic growth is driven by a deepening of the division of labour within the non-agricultural sector, the contribution of science, technology and knowledge to economic development has increased considerably, and the way development has changed qualitatively. Under these conditions, the contribution of further economic growth to the expansion of urbanization has gradually diminished。
