Sustainability, Vol. 11, Pages 3320: Balancing Population Distribution and Sustainable Economic Development in Yangtze River Economic Belt of China (Sustainability)

From a macro perspective, the inconsistency between population distribution and economic development reflects the lag of population mobility and, at the same time, widens regions’ economic disparity. China, as a socialist country, is very concerned with the regional disparities. Aiming at analyzing ways to reduce regional disparities and promote balanced and sustainable regional developments, this paper applies spatial analytical methods in econometrics, using the Yangtze River Economic Belt in China as an example, to analyze the spatial inconsistency between the distribution of population and economic development. The study also examines the influencing factors for such inconsistency and proposes countermeasures from the perspective of floating population and regional economics. The research results show that the improvement of human capital and the tilt of regional policies are conducive to population agglomeration. Furthermore, increasing the input of physical capital can promote economic agglomeration. From the spatial econometric analysis in this paper, the direct and indirect effects have opposite directions, so it is necessary to consider the indirect effects when implementing policies or programs.