Confucius Culture, Local Officials Behavior and Livelihood Finance

People-oriented is the constant principle of the Confucianism, so Confucianism advocates the idea that the people are the foundation of a country and the root of a country's stability, and implementation of people-oriented benevolent government. Therefore, Confucian culture may have an important impact on the concept and behavior of local governments. Based on the policy framework of separating the place of birth and place of office of local officials, this paper uses the data of prefecture-level cities in China from 2001 to 2015 to design an epidemiological method to identify the influence of Confucian cultural tradition, as measured by the density of Jinshi in the Ming and Qing Dynasties (DJ), on the governance ideas and behaviors of local officials. The study found that local officials deeply influenced by Confucian cultural traditions significantly increased public spending on agriculture, education, social security, and health care in their places of office, which held true in a variety of robustness tests. The extended analysis found that the behavior of local officials to increase the fiscal expenditure on the people's livelihood in office due to the influence of Confucian cultural tradition may not be weakened by stronger promotion incentives or greater pressure on fiscal revenue and expenditure. At the same time, local officials deeply influenced by Confucian cultural tradition significantly improved the social livelihood in the place where they worked, specifically, the higher DJ in the birthplace of local official, the lower the urban-rural income gap and the higher the teacher-student ratio in primary schools in officials' office place. It is indicates that traditional culture may be an important source of shaping the governance ideas and behaviors of local officials. Therefore, carrying forward excellent Confucian culture will help to implement the people-centered development idea and improve people's livelihood.