The politics of famine and reform in rural China

While the causes of the Great Leap Famine must be sought in politics, the general literature has tended to place too much emphasis on the role of top leaders. Focusing on the commune mess hall as a key institutional link, the paper points to systematic patterns in the incidence of famine across the provinces and suggests that these patterns were embedded in China's political history dating back to the communist takeover. The paper also argues that the Great Leap Famine induced profound disillusionment with agrarian radicalism and laid the cognitive and political foundations for dismantling the commune system in China.     

Surviving the Famine Unscathed? An Analysis of the Long‐Term Health Effects of the Great Chinese Famine

We study the long‐term health effects of the Chinese Famine of 1959–1961 on five cohorts of individuals exposed to it at different stages of their early lives. Based on a 2011 national survey, we use instrumental variables to estimate the impact of the Famine on various health and lifestyle indicators for the whole sample and for the female and male subsamples separately. We have found some negative effects of Famine exposure: (i) for the whole sample, Famine exposure reduced adult height for two out of five cohorts; (ii) for both the female and the male subsamples, Famine exposure reduced adult height in one cohort; and on the whole the reduction was larger for males. We have also found in the subsample that Famine exposure was associated with (i) a higher risk of having hypertension in one cohort for females; (ii) a higher likelihood of smoking in one male cohort; and (iii) a higher probability of consuming alcohol in one cohort for males. Finally, we have not found a statistically significant association between Famine exposure and the risk of being overweight or underweight, having diabetes or other chronic diseases, having depression.     

Food availability versus consumption efficiency: causes of the Chinese famine

The Chinese famine of 1958–1961 is characterized not only by its great magnitude but also by the uniqueness of its causes. In this article we present evidence that conventional reasons; including FAD and entitlement failure, fail to offer plausible explanations for the tragedy because of the obvious contradiction between food availability and excessive deaths during the famine period. Our thesis is that the famine is caused by consumption inefficiency, a result of the free food supply in the communal dining system in the famine period. This causal factor is unique and unprecedented in the famine history and theory. Yet the thesis is consistent with a basic economic precept: if property rights for food in a society are not defined, food consumption will be inefficient. This inefficiency mades the previously barely adequate food supply in China inadequate, causing a large-scale famine.     

On the causes of China''s agricultural crisis and the great leap famine

Recently researchers have conducted extensive investigations on China's Great Leap crisis. In this article, we critically review this literature and argue that, since the grain production collapse was not the only factor that led to the famine, the causes of these two catastrophes require separate examination. At the theoretical level multidimensional factors were responsible for the crisis. However, existing empirical findings mainly support the exit right hypothesis to explain the dramatic productivity fluctuations in Chinese agriculture, and support grain availability and the urban-biased food distribution system as important causes of the famine. We suggest that additional empirical research is needed to assess the relative importance of the proposed causes.     

中国没有粮食危机

During the Great Famine in China in the early 1960s, almost thirty million lives were lost.As a result, Chinese leaders have been especially afraid of food shortages, which has led to a misguided food policy and caused great economic losses. The argument given by Mr.Lester R. Brown is misleading, and there is no food crisis in China. Food supply on the worm markets is ample, and food prices have been declining over the past fifty years. For China, the cost of imported foodstuffs is less than one percent of its foreign exchange earnings. Maintaining a free food market is more important than having a totally independent domestic food supply.     

Feeding the motherland: grain exports from the Swedish Baltic provinces during the Great Famine of 1696–1697

The research carried out so far has explained the Great Famine of 1696–1697 in the Baltic provinces as a result of the total crop failures in 1695–1696 and an inadequate Swedish economic policy that emptied all the stocks in the provinces through massive grain exports to Finland and Sweden. However, both these views are not consistent with the closer study of the grain exports from the major ports of the Baltic provinces during the famine years. The analysis of Tallinn's customs books shows that the grain exports occurred only on a small scale compared to the normal years, due to the strict ban on grain exports to foreign markets. Furthermore, there is no proof that the markets in the bigger towns lacked available grain in those years. It can also be concluded that the volume of the grain exports was hardly enough to alleviate the famine crisis in Finland or Sweden.     

Mortality in the North Dublin Union during the Great Famine

Debate about the adequacy of public action during the Great Irish Famine is hampered by a lack of detailed information on its impact at local level. This study addresses the question of local agency with a case study of the North Dublin Union, which was responsible for administering the Irish poor law in the northern half of Dublin city. We use workhouse records to study the Union's functioning during the famine. High mortality of workhouse inmates mainly reflected the crisis outside its walls: the guardians and the managers did reasonably well in preserving human life in difficult circumstances.     

Moving to the right place at the right time: Economic effects on migrants of the Manchuria Plague of 1910–11

How do initial arrival conditions in a host locality affect migrants’ subsequent economic welfare? Manchuria (Northeast China), which attracted millions of migrants from North China during the first half of the twentieth century, experienced a devastating pneumonic plague outbreak in 1910–11. Using data from a rural household survey in the mid-1930s, we explore how the post-plague conditions in various villages affected migrant cohorts’ long-term wealth accumulation. We find that the migrant households that moved to plague-hit villages soon after the plague ended prospered the most: they owned at least 112% more land than migrant households that either moved elsewhere or migrated to the same village before or long after the plague outbreak. Our results are robust after controlling for factors that influence the long-term wealth accumulation of migrants and are not caused by selection.     

An annual index of Irish industrial production, 1800–1913

We assemble the Irish industrial data currently available for the years 1800–1921, the period during which the entire island was in a political union with Great Britain, and construct an annual index of Irish industrial output for 1800–1913. We also construct a new industrial price index. Irish industrial output grew by an average of 1.3 per cent per annum between 1800 and the outbreak of the First World War. Industrial growth was slightly slower than previously thought, especially during the two decades immediately preceding the Great Famine. While Ireland did not experience absolute deindustrialisation either before the Famine or afterwards, its industrial growth was disappointing when considered in a comparative perspective.     

Impact of demographic dynamics on food consumption — A case study of energy intake in China

Most existing studies of food demand focus on economic factors, such as income and price. Physical factors which determine human energy intake requirement, given economic conditions, such as gender and age structures of the population as well as occupation, are usually not incorporated. While this is appropriate in the situation of a continuous, stable development of demographic structure, it might lead to biased result if drastic and irregular demographic changes have taken place. This paper provides a case study of China of the impact of demographic dynamics on the change of physical requirement and energy intake demand. The unique population pyramid in China, resulted from the big famine in the early 1960s and then the “One Child” policy” starting from the 1980s, has led to the irregular evolution of age groups and the consequent changes in the proportion of the “big-eaters”. As a result, given food price and income, the very age structure of the population at the time affects the overall weighted energy intake level of the population significantly. Using household survey data ranging from year 1991 to 2009, the index of Adult Male Equivalent Scale (AMES) is constructed to reflect the varying per capita physical requirement resulted from the demographic dynamic over the years in China. The AMES index, together with food price and income, has been applied to the per capita energy intake model. The empirical results show that the AMES index has statically strong impact on per capita energy intake, and the inclusion of the AMES index into the model has improved the model fitness. This finding sheds light on a possible way for improvement in projecting China's food demand in the future by incorporating the country's changing demographic factors.     

How Sensitive are Individual Retirement Expectations to Raising the Retirement Age?

This paper investigates the causal effects of the announcement of an increase in the statutory pension age on employee retirement expectations. In June 2010, the Dutch government signed a new pension agreement with the employer and employee organizations that entailed an increase in the statutory pension age from 65 currently to 66 in 2020 for all inhabitants born after 1954. Given the expected increase in average life expectancy, it was also decided that in 2025 the pension age would be further increased to 67 for those born after 1959. This new pension agreement received huge media coverage. Using representative matched administrative and survey data of public sector employees, we find that the proposed policy reform increased the expected retirement age by 3.6 months for employees born between 1954 and 1959 and by 10.8 months for those born after 1959. This increase is reflected in a clear shift in the retirement peak from age 65 to ages 66 and 67 for the respective treated cohorts. Men respond less strongly to the policy reform than women, but within couples we find no evidence that the retirement expectations of one spouse are affected by an increase in the statutory pension age of the other. Furthermore, we show that treatment effects are largely driven by highly educated individuals but are lower for employees whose job involves physically demanding tasks or managerial and supervisory tasks.     

The Great Depression and the rise of female employment: A new hypothesis

The life-cycle labor supply of women born at the turn of the 20th century diverged sharply from previous cohorts. Although they had similar participation rates in early adulthood, younger cohorts were significantly more likely to work at middle age. This paper documents a link between these changing patterns of female labor supply and the Great Depression. We find that the onset of the Great Depression led to an increase in young women's employment in 1930 via an added-worker effect. Cohorts induced into the workforce in the early 1930s had significantly higher employment rates through the 1940s and 1950s of up to 3 percentage points, suggesting a permanent impact of the Great Depression on women's lifecycle labor supply.     

Inequality of opportunity in household income,China 2002–2018

This study contributes to the literature on inequality of opportunity (IOp) in China by covering a longer and more recent span of time, employing better measures of given characteristics, and analyzing IOp for household income per capita with comparisons to individual income. Furthermore, it analyzes how IOp differs between the rural- and urban-born, and how IOp changes across birth cohorts and with age. We use 2002, 2013 and 2018 data from the Chinese Household Income Study and focus on income inequality among working-age persons. We find that IOp in China declined, especially between 2013 and 2018. In 2002 the large contributors to IOp were region, hukou type at birth, and parents' characteristics. In 2018 the contributions of region, hukou type at birth and parents' occupation had decreased, but that of parents' education had increased. We find that IOp is larger among those born in rural than urban China. Furthermore, IOP's contribution to total inequality within each birth cohort is highest earlier in individuals' work lives and declines with age. IOp is higher for older than younger birth cohorts, reflecting that younger cohorts have benefited from increased opportunities associated with China's reforms and opening up.     

Japan and the great divergence, 730–1874

Despite being the first Asian economy to achieve modern economic growth, Japan has received relatively little attention in the Great Divergence debate. New estimates suggest that although the level of GDP per capita remained below the level of northwest Europe throughout the period 730–1874, Japan experienced positive trend growth before 1868, in contrast to the negative trend growth experienced in China and India, leading to a Little Divergence within Asia. However, growth in Japan remained slower than in northwest Europe so that Japan continued to fall behind until after the institutional reforms of the early Meiji period. The Great Divergence thus occurred as the most dynamic part of Asia fell behind the most dynamic part of Europe.     

Social inequalities in famine mortality in the manorial system of the tsarist Russian province of Livland in the mid-1840s

By relying on longitudinal data on two rural parishes in the Russian Baltic province of Livland, the article analyses two questions concerning famine's short-run effects on mortality in a manorial system: (1) whether there is evidence of a social gradient in mortality during the famine of 1844–6 and (2) whether the manors could protect the peasants against the hardships. The analysis reveals that neither the status of a farmer peasant nor the landlord saved the local inhabitants from an increased risk of dying during the famine of 1844–6. The conventional assumptions about the protective effect of the higher socio-economic status or type of manor against subsistence crisis found very little support in the study.     

大饥荒与宗教信仰——基于CGSS数据的微观分析

文章采用2010—2013年中国综合社会调查(CGSS)微观数据,发现大饥荒对于个人宗教信仰选择具有长期影响。实证结果表明,在控制其他变量影响的情况下,成年时期经历过大饥荒的人群更加倾向于选择信仰宗教,并且考虑流动人口、DID方法和安慰剂(placebo)检验下的回归结果也非常稳健。同时,基于宗教社会网络模型和宗教事后保障模型,文章发现社交动机和个人健康状况是两者的重要影响机制。最后,文章提出了相应的政策建议。     

Effects of cohort size on college premium: Evidence from China's higher education expansion

In this paper, we document the lesser-known heterogeneous trends of college/non-college earnings premium across age groups from 1995 to 2013 in China. Specifically, the college premium in 2013 for the younger group (age 25–34) was about 30 percentage points, similar to the level in 1995, while the college premium in 2013 for the older group (age 45–54) increased to 50 percentage points, nearly double that of 1995. To attribute these divergent trends of the college premium to the changes in the relative size of college workers, we use the model by Card and Lemieux (2001), which incorporates imperfect substitution between similarly educated workers in different age cohorts. Due to the distinctions of these trends in China, our identification is free of the overestimation issue that the existing studies suffer. Our results are similar to those in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Japan. Holding the age cohort and survey year constant, a one unit increase in log relative size of college workers is associated with about 10 percentage points decrease in college/non-college premium and about 18 percentage points decrease in college/high school premium. We further find that the negative effect is much more substantial among the new entrants (age 25–29) than experienced workers (age 30–54). By this pattern, we demonstrate that the new labor market entrants are more sensitive to their own cohort size and argue that the confounding ability composition effect should not be a serious issue.     

Food away from home in Beijing: Effects of wealth,time and “free” meals

Based on a modified Becker household consumption and production model and newly surveyed data set collected by the authors, this study investigated household expenditure on food away from home (FAFH) and its determinants in Beijing, China. A Box–Cox double-hurdle regression is estimated. The key findings suggest that household expenditure on dining out might be significantly underestimated when using the data most commonly used in food consumption research in China. Excluding hosted meals that are not paid for by individual consumers comprises nearly one half of the underestimation. Meanwhile, this exclusion could bias estimates of income effects on the demand for food away from home.     

Early poverty exposure predicts young adult educational outcomes in China

Comparative research suggests that poverty in childhood, and especially in the early years, impedes educational attainment. With longitudinal data from China, we estimate hazard models of dropping out of school in young adulthood with two dynamic measures of childhood poverty: poverty spell indicators that distinguish poverty in early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence, and poverty indices that measure the depth of poverty and distinguish chronic from transient poverty.Four main results emerge: 1) Children who experience spells in poverty leave school at a higher rate than others, even adjusting for poverty in later periods; 2) Transient poverty is more widespread, and shows a greater negative association with school-leaving, than chronic poverty; 3) Early childhood poverty shows greater negative associations with education outcomes than poverty in later periods; and 4) Girls may be more susceptible than boys to early poverty. We further test two possible mechanisms of impact: early nutrition poverty and school fees. While lower protein intake at an early stage of life is related to poorer educational outcomes in young adulthood, adjusting for nutritional deprivation does not attenuate the associations of early transient income poverty. Results do not suggest that cohorts that experienced school-fee abolishment policies experienced different poverty effects than other cohorts.