Essays On The Long Run Impacts Of The Great Chinese Famine On Human Capital

This dissertation consists of three essays. In the first essay, I study the long run effect of the Chinese famine on gender difference using a new and high-quality dataset-2004 MEDOW. By comparing the health and education outcomes of pre-famine (1956-1958), famine (1959-1961) and post-famine (1963-1965) cohorts, I find that the long run impact of famine is not gender neutral. Exposure to famine in utero and in early childhood significantly reduces height and years of schooling for adult women, but not for adult men. Thus, famine significantly increases the gender gap. The greater harm of famine for females could be due to son preference or mortality selection, and to disentangle these two effects I use two alternative measures of son preference in ethnic groups. I find that in ethnic groups without strong son preference, the health outcomes for the female famine cohort is relatively better. Although the mortality selection due to the fragile male phenomenon is the main force of the widening gender gap, son preference also appears to play a role. In the second essay, I use the sharp timing of the Great Chinese Famine (1959-1961) to explore the intergenerational transmission of health and education. First, by comparing the health status and education outcomes between children of mothers born before the famine (1956-1958) or during the famine (1959-1961) and children of mothers born after the famine (1963-1965), I find that children of famine-affected women are more likely to be overweight or obese, and are less likely to be underweight. These effects are stronger for children of mothers born in high famine-severity provinces. Second, children of famine-affected women are less educated and have a lower probability of entering middle school. Third, the famine exposure had no significant impact on females' likelihood of marriage, fertility decisions and fertility rate, though it does impact husband's characteristics. In the third essay (with Elaine M. Liu), we conduct a meta-analysis to investigate how changes over time and model specifications could contribute to the differences in estimates of returns to education in China. The results show that approximately 10 percent of the variation can be explained by changes in labor market. Since the reform in 1978, returns to education have increased approximately 0.2 percentage points a year. This increasing trend has reached a stop when the global recession hit China in 2008. We find that returns to education for migrant workers are 2.3 percentage points lower than that of urban workers.

The study provides a major reassessment of the scale and scope of China’s resurgence over the past half century, employing quantitative measurement techniques which are standard practice in OECD countries, but which have not hitherto been available for China.

The Oxford Handbook of Economics and Human Biology provides an extensive and insightful overview of how economic conditions affect human well-being and how human health influences economic outcomes. The book addresses both macro and micro factors, as well as their interaction, providing new understanding of complex relationships and developments in economic history and economic dynamics. Among the topics explored is how variation in height, whether over time, among different socioeconomic groups, or in different locations, is an important indicator of changes in economic growth and economic development, levels of economic inequality, and economic opportunities for individuals.

Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize An unprecedented, groundbreaking history of China's Great Famine that recasts the era of Mao Zedong and the history of the People's Republic of China. "Between 1958 and 1962, China descended into hell. Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to catch up to and overtake Britain in less than 15 years The experiment ended in the greatest catastrophe the country had ever known, destroying tens of millions of lives." So opens Frank Dikötter's riveting, magnificently detailed chronicle of an era in Chinese history much speculated about but never before fully documented because access to Communist Party archives has long been restricted to all but the most trusted historians. A new archive law has opened up thousands of central and provincial documents that "fundamentally change the way one can study the Maoist era." Dikötter makes clear, as nobody has before, that far from being the program that would lift the country among the world's superpowers and prove the power of Communism, as Mao imagined, the Great Leap Forward transformed the country in the other direction. It became the site not only of "one of the most deadly mass killings of human history,"--at least 45 million people were worked, starved, or beaten to death--but also of "the greatest demolition of real estate in human history," as up to one-third of all housing was turned into rubble). The experiment was a catastrophe for the natural world as well, as the land was savaged in the maniacal pursuit of steel and other industrial accomplishments. In a powerful mesghing of exhaustive research in Chinese archives and narrative drive, Dikötter for the first time links up what happened in the corridors of power-the vicious backstabbing and bullying tactics that took place among party leaders-with the everyday experiences of ordinary people, giving voice to the dead and disenfranchised. His magisterial account recasts the history of the People's Republic of China.

This book is a reflection of the current research that explores the mechanism, dynamics and evidence of the impact of human capital on economic development and social well-being in modern China. Composed of keynote speeches and selected papers from The 2005 International Conference of the Chinese Economists Society (www.china-ces.org), it tracks the latest understanding and empirical evidence of the relationships amongst health, education and economic development in China. The book presents a broad spectrum of study topics covering human capital and economic growth; demand, attainment and disparity in both education and health; and investing in human capital and the economic and social returns in China. Distinguished contributors include Robert Fogel, Michael Grossman, Daniel Hamermesh, Gregory Chow and Dean Jamison.

Recent studies show that almost all industrial countries have experienced dramatic decreases in both fertility and mortality rates. This situation has led to aging societies with economies that suffer from both a decline in the working population and a rise in fiscal deficits linked to increased government spending. East Asia exemplifies these trends, and this volume offers an in-depth look at how long-term demographic transitions have taken shape there and how they have affected the economy in the region. The Economic Consequences of Demographic Change in East Asia assembles a group of experts to explore such topics as comparative demographic change, population aging, the rising cost of health care, and specific policy concerns in individual countries. The volume provides an overview of economic growth in East Asia as well as more specific studies on Japan, Korea, China, and Hong Kong. Offering important insights into the causes and consequences of this transition, this book will benefit students, researchers, and policy makers focused on East Asia as well as anyone concerned with similar trends elsewhere in the world.

China's rise as an economic powerhouse raises a number of questions that are the subject of lively debate. How did the country do it? How applicable are the lessons of China's economic reform of the past thirty years to the challenges it faces in the next three decades? What does the detailed pattern of China's success and challenges look like at the sub-sectoral and sub-national levels, and what does this mean for future policy? How will China's role as a global economic player evolve? The Oxford Companion to the Economics of China presents an original collection of perspectives on the Chinese economy's past, present, and future: 99 entries written by the leading China analysts of our time. The topics covered include: the China model, future prospects for China , China and the global economy, trade and the Chinese economy, macroeconomics and finance, urbanisation, industry and markets, agriculture and rural development, land, infrastructure, and environment, population and labour, dimensions of wellbeing and inequality, health and education, gender equity, regional divergence in China, and a selection of perspectives on some of China's provinces. The Editors are four global leaders in Chinese economic analysis and policy who between them have held or hold the following positions: Director General, International Food Policy Research Institute; Co-Editor, China Economic Review; President Chinese Economists Society; Assistant Director of Research at the IMF; Principal Adviser to the Chief Economist of the World Bank; and Professors of Economics at Ivy League Universities.

Ch. 1. Why China is likely to achieve its growth objectives / Robert W. Fogel -- ch. 2. The contribution of health and education to economic growth in China / Dean T. Jamison, Lawrence J. Lau and Jia Wang -- ch. 3. Education, innovation and economic growth / Xiaoguang Chen -- ch. 4. Endogenous health care and life expectancy in a neoclassical growth model / Michael C. M. Leung and Yong Wang -- ch. 5. Demand for education in China / Gregory C. Chow and Yan Shen -- ch. 6. Human capital and educational demand in China : 2000-2030 / Xiaoying Zheng ... [et al.] -- ch. 7. Changes in the pattern of China's school enrollment rates between 1990 and 2000 / Rachel Connelly and Zhenzhen Zheng -- ch. 8. School attainment and cost of education in rural China / Linxiu Zhang ... [et al.] -- ch. 9. The educational consequences of migration for children in China / Zai Liang and Yiu Por Chen -- ch. 10. An economic analysis of health care in China / Gregory C. Chow -- ch. 11. A theoretical analysis for Chinese new rural cooperative medical system / H. Holly Wang -- ch. 12. Wealth, education and demand for medical care : evidence from rural China / Jin Feng, Bei Qin and Yangyang Yu -- ch. 13. Famine and overweight in China / Zhehui Luo, Ren Mu and Xiaobo Zhang -- ch. 14. Immunization uptake in China / Åke Blomqvist and Haoming Liu -- ch. 15. Changing health inequality in China : the role of relative income / Zhuo Chen, Steven T. Yen and David B. Eastwood -- ch. 16. The relationship between health and schooling / Michael Grossman -- ch. 17. Income productivity in China : on the role of health / Gordon G. Liu ... [et al.] -- ch. 18. Ill health and its potential influence on household consumptions in rural China / Hong Wang, Licheng Zhang and William Hsiao -- ch. 19. Wages and returns to education in Chinese cities / Dennis Tao Yang -- ch. 20. The external returns to education : evidence from Chinese cities / Zhiqiang Liu -- ch. 21. Discrimination and development : the case of beauty in China / Daniel S. Hamermesh, Xin Meng and Junsen Zhang.

Drawing on previously closed archives that have since been made inaccessible again, this volume contains the most crucial primary documents concerning the fate of the Chinese peasantry between 1957 and 1962, covering everything from cannibalism and selective killing to mass murder.