关键词: 数字普惠金融, 农业机械化, 城乡收入差距, 共同富裕, 机制检验

Abstract: As an effective tool for optimizing resource allocation and narrowing the economic divide between urban and rural areas, digital inclusive finance provides a new development dynamic for achieving common prosperity. Agricultural mechanization contributes to improving rural income levels by promoting both farmers business income and wage earnings. This paper conducted a quantitative analysis using city-level data from 2011—2022 to examine how digital financial inclusion promotes agricultural mechanization and, in turn, advances the goal of common prosperity. The results revealed that the coefficient of digital financial inclusion remains negative at the 1% significance level, which indicates that digital financial inclusion can reduce the urban-rural income gap, and this conclusion still held true even after robustness checks. Further analysis showed that the effect of digital financial inclusion on common wealth was more pronounced in regions with higher levels of marketization, than in regions with lower levels of marketisation, as well as in regions with higher or lower levels of digital infrastructure, compared to those with moderate infrastructure. Regionally, the impact was stronger in the eastern and western parts of China than in the central region, with intergroup variability tests confirming significant differences across these groups. Transmission mechanism tests demonstrated that the lagged effects of digital financial inclusion on agricultural mechanization (by one and two periods) were both significantly positive, with coefficients of 0.210 and 0.253, respectively. This indicated that agricultural mechanization plays an important role as a key channel through which digital financial inclusion helps narrow the urban-rural gap. Based on these findings, the study recommends enhancing digital infrastructure, building region-specific frameworks for inclusive digital finance, advancing agricultural mechanization, and reducing urban-rural disparities to achieve the overarching goal of common prosperity.

Key words: digital inclusive finance, agricultural mechanization, urban-rural income gap, common prosperity, mechanism verification