Accessibility of high-speed rail stations and spatial disparity of urban-rural income gaps

With the rapid development of China's high- speed railways (HSR), the impact of high- speed rail construction on urban and rural residents' income gaps has gradually become an academic topic. By constructing an HSR station accessibility indicator, this research illustrated the impact of HSR stations on urban and rural residents. Based on the literature review, it revealed the spatial spillover effect of transportation infrastructure on urban and rural residents' income gaps. Using the prefecture- level city data of China from 2010 to 2017, this research adopted the proximity matrix in the spatial Dubin model to analyze the spatial spillover effect of high-speed rail construction on urban and rural residents' income. The empirical results show that: 1) At the national level, the increase of high- speed rail stations is positively related to urban and rural residents' income gap change, and the spillover effect is also significant. 2) At the regional level, the positive relationship between the increase in the number of high-speed rail stations and urban and rural residents' income gap change mainly exists in the central and western regions of China, while this relationship is not apparent in the eastern region. 3) The trend of the spillover effect of high- speed rail stations on urban- rural income disparity increased across the periods 2010- 2014, 2010- 2015, 2010- 2016, 2010- 2017, but the increase of spillover effect in 2010- 2017 weakened. Since 2016, the number of new high-speed rail stations has decreased compared with previous years. The spillover effect of high- speed rail station accessibility on the income disparity of urban residents has gradually reduced. Therefore, policymakers need to pay more attention to the impact of high-speed rail stations on urban and rural residents' income gaps, especially in prefecture- level cities with a low proportion of the primary industry. Optimizing the layout of new high- speed rail stations and coordinating the distribution of transportation infrastructure between urban and rural areas are important ways to narrow the income gaps between urban and rural residents.