Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to test distance effects of rural residents' income in suburbs of Wuhan city at the farmers' level. Spatial Econometric Model and OLS regression model is employed. The results are as follows：①There is some spatial auto-correlation in the rural residents' income in the study area. Spatial econometric model is better than OLS regression model, but spatial spillover effect is relatively small. ②The influence of different distance factor types on the rural residents' income is different. Among them, The distance between the location of the rural residents and the distance from district government has a positive effect on the rural residents' income, and the distance effect from the center of the nearest township is significantly negative. The distance effect from the center of the first rank of cities is positive, but it is not statistically significant. We suggest that rural residents' income would be increased, at the macro level, by strengthening the spillover effect of the development of the first rank of cities, and differentiating the implementation of local urbanization. At the micro level, by creating rural public space to strengthen cooperation between the villagers' communication and improving the level of education and training.

Key words: rural residents' income;, spatial econometric model, distance effect, farmers' level, local urbanization