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Famine, Fertility, and Fortune in China☆

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Famine, Fertility, and Fortune in China☆ China Economic Review 22 (2011) 244–259 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect China Economic Review Famine, fertility, and fortune in china☆ Xinzheng SHI ⁎ Economics Department, School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China article info abstract Article history: In this paper, I investigate the long term effects of China's Great Famine in 1959–1961 on Received 25 August 2010 cohorts affected by the famine in the first year of life. Using China's 2000 population census Received in revised form 20 December 2010 data and after controlling for positive fertility selections in the famine, I find that women Accepted 3 February 2011 exposed to the famine in the first year of life had a lower probability of completing high school Available online 25 February 2011 and lived in less wealthy households. I do not find any significant effects of the famine on men. In addition, I find that if positive fertility selections are not controlled for, the negative effects fi JEL classi cation: become weaker. I21 © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. J13 J22 O12 O15 Q54 Keywords: Famine Long term effects Fertility selections Education Wealth China 1. Introduction There were numerous famines during the twentieth century.11 The largest of these was China's 1959–1961 famine which resulted in about 30 million excess deaths.22 Previous research has focused on estimating excess mortality; however, there were undoubtedly important effects on the livings as well.33 In particular, children born during the famine may have suffered from malnutrition in the initial years of life, resulting in adverse long term health effects and then influencing economic and social attainments as adults. In this paper, I investigate the long term effects of China's 1959–1961 famine on the education, labor supply, and the wealth of rural Chinese women and men who were exposed to the famine in the first year of life. Children's health was damaged due to insufficient nutrition intake in the famine. This health shock may have had a long term effect simply because it persists over time. The health shock could also affect other outcomes such as educational attainments and labor market performance which help determine long-run well-being. On the other hand, estimates of famine impacts are ☆ I thank Albert Park and Dean Yang for their persistent guidance. And I thank participants of NEUDC 2006 in Cornell University, seminar participants in the University of Michigan, and the anonymous referee for helpful comments. The previous version of this paper was titled as “Does famine have long term effects? Evidence from China”. ⁎ Tel.: +86 10 62784920. E-mail address: [email protected]. 1 Sen, 1981; Ravallion, 1987. 2 Ashton et al., 1984. 3 Stein et al., 1975; Barker et al., 2005. 1043-951X/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.chieco.2011.02.001 X. Shi / China Economic Review 22 (2011) 244–259 245 complicated by potential selection biases. First, parents living through the famine could alter their fertility decisions. Parents unable to provide adequate support for children could choose to postpone childbearing or abort the fetus in the famine, so that only capable parents would still choose to have children. Second, because of the negative impacts of the famine on women's health, only those in good health status were able to conceive. These two led to positive selections of children born. I call these two selections as fertility selections in this paper since they are related to parents' fertility. Third, weaker children were more likely to die during the famine, leading to another positive selection with respect to children's health. The combination of negative shocks and positive selections complicates estimates of famine effects. In this paper, I take advantage of detailed information collected in China's 2000 Population Census to control for positive fertility selections and estimate the long term effects of the 1959–1961 famine. Because of lack of information, I cannot control the positive selection due to children's death in the famine. Therefore, my estimates can be considered as a low bound for the impacts of the famine. The data requirements for conducting such an investigation are considerable. Information is required on the extent of the famine experienced by individuals many years ago as well as detailed information on adult outcomes in the present days. I use provincial excess death rates in 1959–1961 to measure famine intensity. Outcome variables are from the China 2000 Population Census. Because the 2000 census data contain information of every individual's birth province as well as his or her year and month of birth, it is possible to link each individual's adult outcomes with the famine intensity experienced in the childhood. Additionally, the availability of the information of birth month makes it possible to control for fertility selections. The most recent research (Maccini & Yang, 2009) suggested that environmental shocks in the birth year had the significant effects on children's adult outcomes. Maccini and Yang (2009) also addressed that comparing with shocks experienced in infancy, there was no evidence to support that shocks in utero were importantly affecting the results (see Section 6.1 in Maccini and Yang (2009) for detailed discussion). Following Maccini and Yang (2009), I investigate the long term effects of the famine on individuals affected by the famine in the first year of life. The famine in China is usually called Three Year Disaster, meaning that the famine lasted three years, starting in 1959 and ending in 1961.4 Then, for cohorts born between February 1958 and October 1959, they were affected by the famine in the first year of life, but their parents' decision about whether to conceive must be made before the famine, therefore not affected by the famine. However, for cohorts born between July 1959 and October 1959, the famine had started when they were in the first five months in utero, during which the fetus could still be aborted and their parents' decisions about whether to abort the fetus might be affected by the famine, leading to a fertility selection. Therefore, for the sake of controlling fertility selections, I only include cohorts born between February 1958 and June 1959 in the treatment group. I estimate the long term effects of the famine by comparing cohorts conceived at least five months before the famine (therefore not affected by the fertility selections due to the famine) but affected by the famine in the first year of life, that is, cohorts born between February 1958 and June 1959, with those not affected by the famine in the first year of life, that is, cohorts born between January 1954 and January 1958, and comparing individuals born in different provinces. This identification strategy follows the idea of difference-in-difference. Using a sample of rural women from the China 2000 Population Census data, I find that with death rate higher than the normal level by 0.1 percentage point in the famine, women affected by the famine in the first year of life had a 0.09 percentage point lower probability of completing high school and lived in less wealthy households (measured by smaller houses: 0.006 fewer rooms per capita and 0.07 square meters smaller housing area per capita). With the average deviation of the death rates in the famine from the normal level equal to 0.57 percentage point (shown in Table 4), exposure to the famine in the first year totally reduced women's probability to complete high school by 0.5 percentage point and made women live in households having 0.034 fewer rooms per capita and 0.399 square meters smaller housing area per capita. However, I do not find any significant effects of the famine on men. In order to test whether positive fertility selections existed in the famine, I replace cohorts born between February 1958 and June 1959 with cohorts born between July 1959 and December 1961, that is, those affected by the famine in the first year of life and whose parents' fertility was also affected by the famine, and then repeat the analysis. I find that the famine effects become much weaker, providing evidence for the existence of positive fertility selections during the famine. Five other papers have focused on the long term effects of China's 1959–1961 famine. Chen and Zhou (2007) found that cohorts exposed to the famine had a lower average height, less labor supply, and less income. Luo, Mu, and Zhang (2006) found that women exposed to greater severity of famine were more likely to be overweight as adults. Almond, Edlund, Li, and Zhang (2007) found that cohorts exposed to higher exogenous mortality in utero were more likely to be poorer, disabled and illiterate; these cohorts were also more likely not to work, to have worse marriage market outcomes and have daughters. Mu and Zhang (2008) focused on the gender difference of the long term impacts of the famine. They found that the famine had a significant effect on women but not men in terms of disability rate, nonworking rate and illiteracy rate. Meng and Qian (2009) found that exposure to the famine reduced height, weight, weight-for-height, educational attainments and labor supply. Meng and Qian (2009) addressed the selection problem by estimating the impacts of the famine for individuals on different percentiles of the distribution of outcomes and found that the estimated effects were more adverse and larger for the individuals on the 90th percentile. But even if this pattern was found in the data, it is still hard to distinguish selection effects from heterogeneous effects of the famine on the individuals on the upper percentiles of the distribution.
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