Open Government Data and the Urban-Rural Income Divide in China: An Exploration of Data Inequalities and Their Consequences

Amidst excitement for the data revolution's potential benefits, concerns mount over its negative impact as unequal data distribution, access, and use widen disparities between individuals and groups, highlighting the urgent need for advanced theoretical and empirical frameworks. This study investigated the impact of open government data (OGD) on the urban-rural income divide in China. Our theoretical analysis shows that the nonrival nature of data initially widens the urban-rural income divide before eventually mitigating it, resulting in an inverted U-shaped relationship. Using a multiperiod difference-in-differences specification, we found that OGD widened the urban-rural income divide between 2010 and 2019. Furthermore, cities with initially wider urban-rural income divides experienced a greater impact from OGD in expanding this divide. These findings provide valuable insights in the role of open data in addressing income inequality, and contribute to our understanding of data inequalities in the context of the data revolution.