IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_6790.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Causes of China's Great Famine, 1959-1961: County-Level Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Hiroyuki Kasahara
  • Bingjing Li

Abstract

This study provides evidence that the over-export of grains aggravated the severity of China’s Great Famine. We collect county-level data for the 1953-1965 period on death rates, birth rates, amounts of grain procured, output of different types of grain, crop productivity, weather conditions, distance to railways, and the number of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members. We exploit county-level variations in the types of crops each county specialized in to construct Bartik-style measures of export shocks. We regress the death rates on the Bartik export measures and use the weather shocks as instruments for measuring output and consumption. The regression results suggest that increases in grain exports substantially increase death rates, and the effect of grain exports on death rates is larger in counties with lower current output, higher two-period lagged output, larger distance to railways, and a smaller percentage of local CCP members. We also estimate the effects of the procurement policy, examine the relationship between the death rates and the average level of consumption at the county-level during the famine period, and conduct counterfactual experiments to quantify the relative importance of different causes of the Great Famine. The counterfactual experiments indicate that the effect of grain exports explains 12 percent of the excess deaths, which amounts to 1/5 of the effect of the increase in procurement rates between 1957 and 1959. By comparing the distribution of county-level counterfactual changes in death rates if the amount of grain exports in 1959 had been the same as that in 1957, we find that the distribution of the high-export-exposure counties first-order stochastically dominates that of the low-export-exposure counties.

Suggested Citation

  • Hiroyuki Kasahara & Bingjing Li, 2017. "The Causes of China's Great Famine, 1959-1961: County-Level Evidence," CESifo Working Paper Series 6790, CESifo.
  • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6790
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp6790.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Petia Topalova, 2010. "Factor Immobility and Regional Impacts of Trade Liberalization: Evidence on Poverty from India," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(4), pages 1-41, October.
    2. Luigi Pascali, 2017. "The Wind of Change: Maritime Technology, Trade, and Economic Development," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(9), pages 2821-2854, September.
    3. Wei Li & Dennis Tao Yang, 2005. "The Great Leap Forward: Anatomy of a Central Planning Disaster," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(4), pages 840-877, August.
    4. Unknown, 2005. "Forward," 2005 Conference: Slovenia in the EU - Challenges for Agriculture, Food Science and Rural Affairs, November 10-11, 2005, Moravske Toplice, Slovenia 183804, Slovenian Association of Agricultural Economists (DAES).
    5. Nancy Qian, 2008. "Missing Women and the Price of Tea in China: The Effect of Sex-Specific Earnings on Sex Imbalance," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(3), pages 1251-1285.
    6. Lin, Justin Yifu & Yang, Dennis Tao, 2000. "Food Availability, Entitlements and the Chinese Famine of 1959-61," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 110(460), pages 136-158, January.
    7. M. Scott Taylor, 2011. "Buffalo Hunt: International Trade and the Virtual Extinction of the North American Bison," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(7), pages 3162-3195, December.
    8. Shujie Yao, 1999. "A Note on the Causal Factors of China's Famine in 1959-1961," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(6), pages 1365-1372, December.
    9. Yang, Dali L. & Su, Fubing, 1998. "The politics of famine and reform in rural China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 141-155.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kasahara, Hiroyuki & Li, Bingjing, 2020. "Grain exports and the causes of China's Great Famine, 1959–1961: County-level evidence," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    2. Xue Feng Hu & Gordon G. Liu & Maoyong Fan, 2017. "Long‐Term Effects of Famine on Chronic Diseases: Evidence from China's Great Leap Forward Famine," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(7), pages 922-936, July.
    3. Gørgens, Tue & Meng, Xin & Vaithianathan, Rhema, 2012. "Stunting and selection effects of famine: A case study of the Great Chinese Famine," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(1), pages 99-111.
    4. Feng, Xunan & Johansson, Anders C., 2018. "Living through the Great Chinese Famine: Early-life experiences and managerial decisions," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 638-657.
    5. Cormac Ó Gráda, 2007. "Making Famine History," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 45(1), pages 5-38, March.
    6. Tan, Chih Ming & Tan, Zhibo & Zhang, Xiaobo, 2014. "Sins of the fathers: The intergenerational legacy of the 1959-1961 Great Chinese Famine on children's cognitive development:," IFPRI discussion papers 1351, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    7. Wenli Cheng & Hui Shi, 2019. "Surviving the Famine Unscathed? An Analysis of the Long‐Term Health Effects of the Great Chinese Famine," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 86(2), pages 746-772, October.
    8. Loh, Chung-Ping A. & Li, Qiang, 2013. "Peer effects in adolescent bodyweight: Evidence from rural China," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 35-44.
    9. Elizabeth Gooch, 2018. "Resistance is Futile? Institutional and Geographic Factors in China’s Great Leap Famine," HiCN Working Papers 266, Households in Conflict Network.
    10. Huang, Cheng & Phillips, Michael R. & Zhang, Yali & Zhang, Jingxuan & Shi, Qichang & Song, Zhiqiang & Ding, Zhijie & Pang, Shutao & Martorell, Reynaldo, 2013. "Malnutrition in early life and adult mental health: Evidence from a natural experiment," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 259-266.
    11. Li, Qiang & An, Lian, 2015. "Intergenerational health consequences of the 1959–1961 Great Famine on children in rural China," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 18(C), pages 27-40.
    12. Mu, Ren & Zhang, Xiaobo, 2008. "Gender difference in the long-term impact of famine:," IFPRI discussion papers 760, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    13. Loren Brandt & Aloysius Siow & Carl Vogel, 2016. "Large Demographic Shocks And Small Changes In The Marriage Market," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 14(6), pages 1437-1468, December.
    14. Matthieu CLEMENT, 2010. "Food Availability and Food Entitlements during the Chinese Great Leap Forward Famine: A dynamic panel data analysis (In French)," Cahiers du GREThA (2007-2019) 2010-03, Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée (GREThA).
    15. Xin Meng & Nancy Qian & Pierre Yared, 2010. "The Institutional Causes of China's Great Famine, 1959-61," NBER Working Papers 16361, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Bai, Ying & Kung, James Kai-sing, 2014. "The shaping of an institutional choice: Weather shocks, the Great Leap Famine, and agricultural decollectivization in China," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 1-26.
    17. Loren Brandt & Aloysius Siow & Carl Vogel, 2008. "Large Shocks and Small Changes in the Marriage Market for Famine Born Cohorts in China," Working Papers tecipa-334, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    18. Kim, Seonghoon & Deng, Quheng & Fleisher, Belton M. & Li, Shi, 2014. "The Lasting Impact of Parental Early Life Malnutrition on Their Offspring: Evidence from the China Great Leap Forward Famine," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 232-242.
    19. Xin Meng & Nancy Qian, 2009. "The Long Term Consequences of Famine on Survivors: Evidence from a Unique Natural Experiment using China's Great Famine," NBER Working Papers 14917, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Douglas Almond & Lena Edlund & Hongbin Li & Junsen Zhang, 2010. "Long-Term Effects of Early-Life Development: Evidence from the 1959 to 1961 China Famine," NBER Chapters, in: The Economic Consequences of Demographic Change in East Asia, pages 321-345, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    famine; over-export of grains; inflexible procurement; Great Leap Forward;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6790. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.