The Determinants of Economic Inequality within Cities and Counties in Taiwan: An Empirical Analysis from 2009 to 2013

• Main Authors: LAI,YU-HSUAN, 賴鈺璇
• Other Authors: LUOR, CHING-JYUHN
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/3hdq47

碩士 === 國立臺北大學 === 公共行政暨政策學系 === 103 === This thesis explores the determinants of economic inequality within cities and counties in Taiwan from 2009 to 2013. The author asks whether the gap of income distribution within cities or counties have been decreased due to the distributive benefits (block grant) from central government of Taiwan. Except for the effects of block grants, some other factors may influence the income inequality within cities or counties. First of all, the political factors of cities or counties themselves maybe at work, for example, the party affiliation of mayor or counties- in- chief, divided or unified government in local level etc... Secondly, the policy factors would play roles. The policy preferences of mayor or counties- in- chief usually shape the policy output. If mayor and counties-in-chief prefer alleviating the uneven distribution of income, they will put lots of resources on social welfare and education expenditures. Third, the social and economic conditions should be controlled for, for example, the proportion of the elderly people, the human capital, and economic products. Multivariate models are employed to estimate the effects of possible factors. Although some hypotheses are not supported by statistical findings in this thesis, there still have lots of policy implications that the author would extensively discuss, such as the effect of block grants from central government, capital gain, and the spending of social welfare and education from local government. This thesis makes considerable contribution on the extant studies of redistributive policy in Taiwan, because so limited research explicitly deals with the city or county level empirically. The contribution is not only significant in Taiwan studies, but also in the field of redistributive studies as a whole.