The intergenerational legacy of the 1959-1961 Great Chinese Famine on children's cognitive development

Unveiling the long-term impact: exploring the link between exposure to the great Chinese famine and health-related quality of life in middle-aged and elderly populations through propensity score matching

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to explore the relationship between exposure to the Great Chinese Famine (1959-1961) and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in middle-aged and elderly people after adjusting for selection bias using propensity score matching (PSM).

METHODS

This cross-sectional study was conducted in Ningxia, China, in 2022. A multi-stage stratified cluster-randomized design was used to obtain a representative sample in each county. We included participants aged 45 years and older, who had lived there for more than 1 year. This study included 5,793 middle-aged and elderly people in Ningxia, China as the research subjects. This study used propensity score matching (PSM) to empirically examine the association between exposure to the Great Famine and HRQoL in middle-aged and older adults. In the first step, we estimated a binary logistic regression model with Great Chinese Famine exposure as the dependent variable and 7 factors as confounding variables. In the second step, we performed propensity score analysis using the confounding variables identified in the first step to control for potential selection bias. To avoid bias due to age differences, we introduced the age variable into the regression model to explore the effect of the Great Famine impact. Different definitional criteria were used to define the exposed and control groups in order to robustly test the findings.

RESULTS

The results showed that middle-aged and elderly people who reported exposure to the Great Famine had lower HRQoL than middle-aged and elderly people who were not exposed to the Great Famine, after adjusting for gender, educational background, economic level, BMI, Chronic conditions, smoking and drinking. In order to avoid the influence of age differences on the results, this study used matched samples and included the age variable in the regression analysis to minimise the bias due to age. Also, exposure was defined in different ways to test the robustness of the results.

CONCLUSIONS

The health-related quality of life of middle-aged and older adults who experienced China's Great Famine (1959-1961) declined substantially in later life, but the inclusion of the age variable made the statistical results non-significant.

The intergenerational legacy of early-life malnutrition during the great leap forward famine in China

BACKGROUND

Parents' early-age experiences may influence their life-course trajectories and potentially also affect the wellbeing of their offspring. There is an emerging body of literature on the intergenerational legacy of early childhood malnutrition. In this study, we examined whether and to what extent parental exposure to the 1959 China Famine associated with themselves and their children's outcomes. We differentiated exposures to famine at different stages (prenatal and childhood) of parents' life course.

METHOD

Using the 2010 China Family Panel Study (CFPS) data, this study applied the Difference-in-differences (DID) approach to examine the consequences of famine exposure.

RESULTS

Our analysis showed that mothers who experienced famine during their prenatal period were more likely to have lower socioeconomic outcomes and that their children were disadvantaged in terms of annual income and monthly salary. Fathers no matter born in pre-famine cohort or famine cohort are not associated with their socioeconomic outcomes, and the intergenerational consequences of famine on the economic outcomes of offspring do not appear to be conveyed along the paternal line. For health outcomes, however, the results showed that parental exposure to famine was not associated with children's health condition.

CONCLUSION

Our study extends the literature regarding Baker's hypothesis by providing the empirical evidence of the long-term intergenerational legacy of famine. Furthermore, the study enriches the empirical relevance of the intergenerational mobility research from the life-course perspective. Finally, the evidence of this study also offers policy implications for addressing the persistence of intergenerational inequality and poverty caused by early-life shocks.

The long-run and intergenerational impact of early exposure to the Great Chinese Famine of 1959-61 on mental health

We study the effects of early exposure to the Great Chinese Famine on the mental health and subjective well-being of survivors as well as their offspring using data from the 2010 and 2014 waves of the China Family Panel Studies. Our analysis focuses on K6 scores, severe mental illness, and life dissatisfaction. We find that early exposure to the famine has impaired the mental health outcomes of women, but not men (i.e., the first generation). For the second generation, negative effects only show up among the sons of male famine survivors. Some preliminary evidence suggests that the mechanism for such transmission may have to do with the cultural son preference.

Parental gender preferences over three centuries: Evidence from Argentina

In this paper I examine the evolution of parental gender preferences in Argentina (i.e., parents who prefer a certain gender composition in their children). To do this, I use census microdata that spans the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. The estimation strategy exploits the plausibly random assignment in the gender of children. The results show a persistent preference for a mixed gender composition (i.e., having at least one boy and one girl) instead of children of the same gender. This translates into an increase in the probability of having a third child, conditional on already having two children of between 9%-23% for those couples who have children of the same gender -in relation to couples with children of opposite genders-. These preferences are heterogeneous over time and have important implications in terms of fertility (i.e., the reduction of these mixed gender preferences -in favor of greater gender-neutrality- could contribute to reducing the number of children per couple). In addition, the findings of this work support the empirical literature that uses the gender composition of the first two children as an instrumental variable to study the impact of fertility on labor participation.