Abstract: From the perspective of the balanced development of urban-rural old-age insurance, this paper makes use of the statistical data of China's 31 provinces from 2013 to 2019 and constructs a panel data regression model to conduct an empirical analysis of the impact of the expenditure level of China's old-age insurance on urban-rural income gap. The results show that, as a whole, the expenditure levels of China's basic old-age insurance have an inverted U-shaped relationship with the residents' income, and a U-shaped relationship with the urban-rural income gap. The higher the balanced degree of urban-rural endowment insurance, the narrower the urban-rural income gap will be. The results of further study show that the effect of the balanced degree of the expenditure level of urban-rural basic pension insurance at different regions on the urban-rural income gap presents a certain difference. The effect at the eastern and western regions is consistent with that of the whole country, but the effect at the central region is not significant. By optimizing the level of urbanization and the structure of government fiscal expenditures, increasing the per capita funding level for the urban-rural basic old-age insurance moderately, and at the same time improving the per capita funding level of the urban employees' basic old-age insurance fund, the balanced development of the urban-rural old-age insurance will be effectively promoted, thereby the urban-rural income gap will be narrowed.

Key words: expenditure level of old-age insurance, urban-rural income gap, balanced development