Abstract For the agricultural labor,the urban-rural income gap is the most critical “pull” factor to induce its mobility. When calculating the urban-rural income gap, the consumption factor as the flow cost should be counted in the calculation framework of “pull”.This paper reconstructs the urban-rural net income gap involved with consumption factors, and establishes the urban-rural net income gap model and error correction model to respectively estimate the long-term and short-term co-integration relationship between the urban-rural net income gap and agricultural labor mobility. The results suggest that there is a co-integration relationship between rural-urban net income gap and migrant workers, which plays an important role for agricultural labor to flow into urban cities. Meanwhile, rural-urban consumption gap which is taken as flow cost slows down pulling force of rural-urban income gap to the scale of agricultural labor flow: both seen in the long and short terms, when the urban-rural net income gap increases, the scale of agricultural labor flow grows smaller.
2019, Vol. 36 
