Abstract:

In the era of the digital economy, the inequality of opportunities for wealth accumulation can easily give a rise to a "lying flat" sentiment at the social level. This sentiment poses a significant obstacle to the advancement of common prosperity. This study uses CHFS data to construct a counterfactual household wealth distribution to measure wealth opportunity inequality, examining the digital economy's impact from incremental catch-up and stock restructuring perspectives. The findings reveal that the digital economy possesses both a creative effect that reduces household wealth opportunity inequality and a counteracting crowding-out effect arising from the dynamic nature of the digital divide and the phased nature of technological dividends. The combined influence of these two effects exhibits a "U–shaped" nonlinear pattern across different stages of digital economic development. This implies that a purely market-driven digital economy, in the absence of institutional regulation, may ultimately exacerbate structural inequalities in wealth distribution. These effects operate through the “skills training” and “flexible employment” under the incremental perspective, and through the “asset allocation patterns” and “risk management" under the stock perspective. Mitigating these adverse impacts can be achieved by improving institutional regulation. This effect is more pronounced for "digitally transitioning households" and households in western regions, while caution is warranted regarding potential new waves of opportunity inequality stemming from the digital divide. This research provides a new perspective for comprehensively understanding the dynamic trends of wealth opportunity inequality in the digital economy era. The exploration of dual mechanisms offers valuable policy insights for reasonably reducing wealth opportunity inequality and thereby promoting common prosperity.

Key words:

digital economy, wealth opportunity inequality, common prosperity, incremental catch–up, stock restructuring

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