When was the difference between urban and rural areas formulated? Such as education, employment, medical care, life value and so on.

China's urban-rural gap system: China's urban-rural gap is the largest in the world. In 2000, the per capita monetary income of urban residents in China was 2.79 times that of rural residents, second only to Zimbabwe. However, if non-monetary income is included, the income gap between urban and rural areas in China is higher than that in Zimbabwe. Such a huge gap between urban and rural areas did not appear only now, but was rooted in the era of planned economy. From 65438 to 0978, the per capita income of urban residents was 2.8 times that of rural residents, equivalent to the level in 2000. The income gap between urban and rural areas in the era of planned economy comes from the scissors price difference between workers and peasants and the restriction of rural industrial structure. In an agricultural society, the price of agricultural products largely determines the income level of this society. Although the narrowing of the income gap between urban and rural areas in the early 1980s was related to the increase in agricultural output caused by rural reform, the rapid rise in agricultural product prices in the late 1970s also contributed. However, it is impossible for rural areas to get rich by agricultural products, and the development of non-agricultural industries is indispensable to improve rural income level. Fei Xiaotong described the germination of non-agricultural industries in the Yangtze River Delta in the 1930s in jiang village economy, but this trend was interrupted by the subsequent war. After the founding of New China, it should have been the best time to restore the "golden decade" in 1930s, but the subsequent collectivization movement once again interrupted the process of rural industrialization. Rural areas are forced to equate with agriculture, and rural residents are forced to equate with farmers. Today, these two equal signs are still stubbornly entrenched in many people's minds. Rural areas are positioned as production bases that simply provide cheap food for cities, so the income of rural residents naturally cannot be improved. In fact, the gap between urban and rural areas was fixed when the urban-rural segregation policy was formally implemented in 1958, because the wages in cities were hardly adjusted in the next two decades, and the income gap between urban and rural areas was still as high as 2.8 times in 1978. However, the opening of rural industries does not necessarily mean the narrowing of the gap between urban and rural areas. The rapid development of township industries did play a certain role in narrowing the gap between urban and rural areas in the 1980s, but this was based on the premise that cities did not carry out market-oriented reforms. When the urban economy was fully marketized in the 1990s, the gap between urban and rural areas widened again. Under the condition of market economy, resources always flow to places with high returns. In China, the rate of return on capital in cities is much higher than that in rural areas, so it is not surprising that capital is concentrated in cities. Urban residents have more resources, and their income naturally grows faster than that of rural residents. The hukou system has always been a criticized institutional arrangement. In the era of planned economy, it is also the basis of urban-rural isolation. After entering the 1990s, rural residents broke through the shackles of registered permanent residence. Millions of people found jobs in cities, and some even lived in cities for a long time. After the migration tide in the early 1990s, the number of rural migrants in cities has stabilized. In this case, what is the significance of hukou to restrict the flow of rural residents to cities? I'm afraid the role of hukou in finding a job is not obvious. According to the research of Song Hongyuan and others, 87% of the rural floating population in cities have not graduated from junior high school, which means that most rural floating population can't compete with urban residents for jobs, and can only engage in jobs that urban residents don't want to do, such as construction workers and domestic service. In the 1980s, the income gap between urban and rural areas narrowed, but after entering the 1990s, it showed an expanding trend. In 2000, it returned to the level of 65,438+0,978. However, the sharp increase of rural migrants in 1990s shows that opening rural migrants is not enough to bridge the income gap between urban and rural areas. In fact, for underdeveloped areas, migration has aggravated the income gap of migrants, because people with higher education and ability can often find jobs in cities. So, what's the difference between cities and rural areas? Education and social security are poor. Although the proportion of education in salary return is still low, as we all know, a certain education is the threshold that must be crossed to get a decent job. If a young man has a vocational high school or technical secondary school diploma, he can at least become a skilled worker in a factory; If he has a college diploma, he can find a white-collar job; If he has a bachelor's degree, he can find a well-paid white-collar job; ..... If a young man doesn't have any of the above diplomas, he can only do the lowest-level jobs. In modern society, education is the most important factor to determine how high a person can climb on the social ladder, and the most significant personal difference between rural residents and urban residents is that the education level of the former is much lower than that of the latter, and it is natural that rural income is lower than urban income. Education not only brings rewards to individuals, but also has a positive impact on others in society. The return of education to two people is not equal to the sum of their respective returns, but greater than this sum, because they can have effective discussions and thus improve their productivity. Therefore, education investment has economies of scale. In that case, why is there so little investment in rural education? Because investors can't get all the returns. For society, a rural child's education has positive externalities, but not all the benefits generated by externalities can be obtained by his parents, who are naturally unwilling to invest in the education needed by society. External investment should be done by the government, or subsidized by the government, but unfortunately, government officials are too short-sighted: the cycle of educational return is long, and short-sighted government officials can't afford it. Therefore, the reality in China is that rural parents have the obligation to complete their children's "nine-year education", but they have no right to enjoy the preferential treatment enjoyed by urban parents: free education for children. From this point of view, the present situation is far worse than that of collectivization, when rural basic education was at least free. The retrogression in rural areas is more manifested in medical care. China's planned economy is undoubtedly a great failure on the whole, and the collectivization of rural areas is a disaster. However, with the strong ideological support, the collectivization era has made unprecedented achievements in improving people's basic health. Take the most commonly used infant mortality rate as an example. The infant mortality rate in China was as high as 180‰ in 1964, and it dropped sharply to 26.92 in 198 1 year, including 36.96 in rural areas. This is a remarkable achievement (the infant mortality rate in India has only dropped from 198 1 to 1997 to 70). In rural areas, this achievement is undoubtedly related to the emphasis on rural basic medical care in the collectivization era. At that time, the cooperative medical system provided basic public health and medical services, although the family background was very thin. However, the basis of cooperative medical care is the people's commune system. With the disappearance of the commune system, the cooperative medical system was dissolved by itself. Twenty years later, the consequences began to become clear. Since 1980s, the infant mortality rate in China has decreased at a slower rate than that in other developing countries. After entering the 1990s, the infant mortality rate rose instead of falling, from 1990 to 1995 in rural areas, and from 32.24 to 44.79 in just five years. This reversed situation cannot but arouse our great concern. The central government's plan to rebuild the cooperative medical system in 2002 was launched under this background. But the question is, is it enough just to resume cooperative medical care? Strengthening public health support in rural areas is undoubtedly the right move, but cooperative medical care may be far from enough to prevent and treat personal diseases. One of the main causes of rural poverty is disease. Serious illness is a double-edged sword for farmers: on the one hand, it reduces farmers' income ability, on the other hand, it is very likely to force farmers to borrow money; The result of the superposition of the two is that farmers fall into poverty. Therefore, medical care is not only a health problem, but also related to the income and socio-economic status of rural residents. Reconstruction of rural medical system must have a global perspective. The goal of urban medical reform is clear, that is, to make medical insurance cover all urban workers. The goal of rebuilding rural medical care should be the same. In the pilot areas of urban-rural integration, urban medical insurance has spread to rural areas, which may be a development direction in the future. Rural residents not only lag behind urban residents in children's education and medical security, but also lag behind urban residents in retirement, housing and unemployment insurance. According to a recent study conducted by Zhao and others using census data, 45% of the income gap between urban and rural areas comes from the fact that urban residents enjoy more retirement benefits than rural residents. Urban residents can get retirement wages to meet their basic needs after retirement, while rural residents rely entirely on past accumulation and children's support. Many old people have to engage in production by themselves. In the current legal framework and mainstream discourse, family pension is not only a virtue, but also a legal requirement, but its essence is to escape the responsibility of the state. There is no essential reason to think that urban old-age care should be socialized, while rural old-age care must be borne by families. People who discuss the "three rural issues" often hope to quickly change the face of rural areas in China through government policies; At the policy level, this comes down to a single income problem. However, whether the rural areas can develop rapidly is not a problem that can be solved overnight by government policies. China is already a market economy, and the final solution of the "three rural issues" depends largely on the market. This process may be very long. So, what can the government do? The government should provide rural residents with the basic ability to participate in the market. The word "ability" is a noun used by Amartya Sen to discuss human freedom, which refers to the combination of functions that people need to engage in meaningful activities. In rural areas of China, the most urgently needed abilities are education and basic social security. It is impossible for a country to change a person's birthplace and make a rural child become an urban child overnight, but it can provide him with basic education and enable him to have the basic ability to participate in market competition. The state can't guarantee that the child won't get sick, but it can provide him with basic medical care, old-age care and unemployment protection, so that he can have no worries and compete with his peers in the city to the maximum extent. Although he may be at a disadvantage compared with the city people because of his different background, the country has eliminated all the unequal conditions imposed on him, which is enough, and the rest depends on his intellectual level and luck. Trying to solve the "three rural issues" in one go will certainly produce economic policies to encourage the development of crops; Giving rural residents the same ability is the long-term solution to the problems of agriculture, countryside and farmers.