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The Long Term Consequences of Famine on Survivors: Evidence from a Unique Natural Experiment using China's Great Famine

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Author Info
Xin Meng
Nancy Qian

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Abstract

This paper estimates the long run impact of famine on survivors in the context of China's Great Famine. To address problems of measurement error of famine exposure and potential endogeneity of famine intensity, we exploit a novel source of variation in regional intensity of famine derived from the unique institutional determinants of the Great Famine. To address attenuation bias caused by selection for survival, we estimate the impact on the upper quantiles of the distribution of outcomes. Our results indicate that in-utero and early childhood exposure to famine had large negative effects on adult height, weight, weight-for-height, educational attainment and labor supply.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 14917.

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Date of creation: Apr 2009
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14917

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General
J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics
O1 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development

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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Belton M. Fleisher & Seonghoon Kim, 2009. "The China Great Leap Forward Famine: The Lasting Impact of Mothers’ Fetal Malnutrition on Their Offspring," Working Papers 09-04, Ohio State University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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