Gansu Survey of Children and Families Dissertations
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Publication Three Essays in Development Economics(2013-06-01) Leight, Jessica E.This thesis seeks to analyze two questions central to the economic welfare of rural households in developing countries: the trade-offs between equity and efficiency induced by hybrid forms of property rights, and the decisions made by households in the process of human capital accumulation, particularly in early childhood. The first two chapters examine the impact of periodic land reallocations and tenancy reforms in China and India, respectively, on intravillage land inequality and the investment decisions made by rural households. The final chapter turns the focus to inequality within the household, analyzing how intrahousehold allocation of educational resources in rural China responds to inequities in endowment between children. In the first chapter, I evaluate the impact of village-level land reallocations in China on household economic outcomes. Since land was decollectivized in China in 1983, village leaders have implemented regular forced reallocations of land designed to enhance intravillage equity and attain other policy goals. I estimate the impact of insecure tenure using the past history of land shifts as an instrument for current tenure insecurity, and find that an increase in the probability of losing the current plot yields a decrease in agricultural inputs and production of around one standard deviation. Though the costs of insecure tenure are high, structural estimates of the varying cost of reallocation across different villages suggest the choice to reallocate does reflect an optimizing process on the part of village officials, who reallocate where the net benefit is larger. However, the observed pattern of reallocations would be optimal only given an objective function for the village leader that places an extremely high weight on equity, and even given this objective function, there is evidence that village leaders may be making some costly mistakes. In the second chapter, coauthored with Timothy Besley, Rohini Pande and Vijayendra Rao, we seek to analyze the long-run impact of land reform in southern India. Though land reform policies have been widely enacted across the developing world, evidence about the long-run impact of these policies remains quite limited. In this paper, we provide evidence about these long-run effects by combining the quasi-random assignment of linguistically similar areas to South Indian states that subsequently pursued different tenancy regulation policies with cross-caste variation in landownership. Roughly thirty years after the bulk of land reform occurred, land inequality is lower in more regulated areas, but the impact differs by caste group. Tenancy reforms increase own-cultivation among middle caste households, but render low caste households more likely to work as daily agricultural laborers. At the same time, an increase in agricultural wages is observed. These results are consistent with credit markets playing a central role in determining the long-run impact of land reform: tenancy regulations increased land sales to the relatively richer and more productive middle caste tenants but reduced land access for poorer low caste tenants. In the final chapter, I analyze the strategies employed by households in rural China to allocate educational expenditure to children of different initial endowments, examining whether parents use educational funding to reinforce or compensate for these differences. Empirical results obtained employing early-childhood climatic shocks as an instrument for endowment, measured as height-for-age, indicate that parental expenditure is preferentially directed to the relatively weaker child. In response to the mean difference in endowment between siblings, parents redirect between 10 and 20% of discretionary educational spending to the child with lower endowment, and this effect is robust across multiple measures of endowment and multiple measures of climatic shocks. This analysis is consistent with the hypothesis that parents use the intrahousehold allocation of resources to compensate for differences in endowment and thus in expected welfare, between their children.Publication Three Essays on Human Capital Investment in China(2012-09-01) Chen, QihuiThis dissertation consists of three empirical essays on human capital investment issues in China. The first essay examines the trade-off between child quantity and quality in rural China, exploiting a source of exogenous variation in family size generated by the temporary relaxation in China’s one-child policy in the mid-1980s. The relaxed population policy allowed a rural couple to have a second child if the first-born was a girl. Exploiting this policy change, this essay creates IVs for family size from the sex-composition of the first two children in a family. The IV results indicate that rural parents hardly face a trade-off between child quantity and quality, at least in terms of their monetary investments in children’s education. These results imply that relaxing the one-child policy, as has been proposed by many researchers as a solution to the “missing girls” problem, is unlikely to cause reductions in parental investments in children’s education. The second essay investigates the impact of parental education on children’s academic skills acquired in basic education (grades 1-9) in rural China. It uses the scores on a cognitive ability test as an error-ridden measure of child ability, and then instruments this ability measure using IVs generated from the Great Chinese Famine (1958-61). It finds that parental education has a statistically significant impact on children’s academic skills, even after controlling for child ability. Moreover, while father’s education matters for child math skills for both boys and girls, mother’s education matters only for girls. These results imply that promoting rural women’s education may be an effective way to reduce the gender gap in math skills. The third essay estimates the causal impact of mother’s education on standardized child height, exploring the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-76) to create IVs for mother’s education. The preferred IV estimates indicate that the loss in mother’s education due to the Chinese Cultural Revolution led to a 0.3 standard deviation decrease in child height. This loss is substantial, in a magnitude similar to the effect of being exposed in early childhood to the Chinese Great Famine (1959-61).Publication Essays on Health, Education, and Behavioral Choices(2010-01-01) Zhao, MengMy dissertation is composed of two essays that investigate the interrelationship between consumers’ health, education, behavioral choices, and perceptions. The first essay evaluates the impact of teenage smoking on schooling and estimates the lifetime income loss due to lower educational achievement and attainment caused by youth smoking. Using unusually rich data from China, the study shows that youth smoking can biologically reduce learning productivity and discourage motivation to go to school (where smoking is forbidden), resulting in lower educational outcomes and, consequently, reduced lifetime income. The second essay empirically analyzes the effect of a doctor diagnosis of hypertension (high blood pressure) on food demand and nutrient intake. The study shows that three quarters of the hypertensive population in China are unaware of their condition. A doctor’s diagnosis can lead consumers to update their perceptions about their health and, therefore, make better decisions for their food choices. The study finds that, after a diagnosis of hypertension, consumers significantly reduce their daily fat intake, especially the consumption of animal oil and pork. The effect is stronger for 2004 data, compared to the 1997 and 2000 data. This suggests that consumers have become more health conscious in recent years.Publication Local advantage: Community resources, teacher attributes, and student mathematics achievement in rural northwest China(2005-01-01) Adams, Jennifer HIn China, a growing awareness that many areas have been left behind during an era characterized by market reform has raised concerns about the impact of community disadvantage on schooling. In these papers, I use data from the Gansu Survey of Children and Families (GSCF-1) to examine the relationship between student achievement and the characteristics of communities and their local schools in one of China's poorest provinces. The GSCF-1 examines children's schooling, achievement, and welfare in the context of rural poverty by integrating a primary survey of children with separate instruments that measure family, village, and school environments. In my study, I investigate an analytic sample of 436 children linkable to secondary samples of mothers, homeroom teachers, school principals, and village leaders. In the first paper, I investigate whether villages exert distinct influences on student achievement. Does living in a particular community provide children with an educational advantage? Do economic and social resources in the community affect student achievement? I begin by investigating the "fixed-effects" of village on student achievement. My analyses indicate that controlling for student background, the village in which a child lives influences his or her mathematics achievement. Next, building on these results, I address my second question by replacing the village "fixed-effects" by their equivalent random-effects to explore whether specific community characteristics influence student achievement. My results reveal that children who live in villages with a higher per pupil expenditure from non-governmental resources have higher mathematics achievement, net of controls. Similarly, children who live in villages with higher levels of social capital have higher math scores on average. In the second paper, I use random-effects analysis to examine whether teacher attributes make a difference for student mathematics achievement in rural China. What kind of teacher characteristics matter? And what role might teacher attributes play in linking community disadvantage to student achievement? These analyses demonstrate not only that teachers matter for student mathematics achievement, but also reveal a complex picture of what kind of teacher characteristics make a difference in resource-constrained rural schools.Publication Aspirations and Schooling: Analysis of the formation and intra-household impact of educational aspirations in rural China(2009-06-03) Meng, JoyceConventional household decision-making models exclude children as participatory agents with bargaining power, even though as the child ages and transitions into adulthood, he or she exerts more control over many decisions affecting his or her life, even in tradition-bound societies. In decisions regarding school enrollment and continuation, the preferences of young people remain an important, yet under-explored factor. Especially in a developing country context, few economics studies have attempted to explore the connection between extrinsic socioeconomic variables and the formation of intrinsic educational aspirations, with the latter influencing educational outcomes. This study is the first to investigate whose aspirations matter in education within the household, and how factors such as income, wealth, and child age affect the relative importance of these aspirations, a proxy for decision-making power. Using longitudinal survey data from rural China, this paper first explores the determinants of parent and child aspirations for schooling, and then investigates the different factors that affect the relative importance attributed to parent and child schooling preferences on school continuation. The five main results of the study are: (1) Aspirations for children are lower than parental aspirations, and correspond more strongly to measures of ability, while gender and wealth were not significant. In contrast, wealth is a significant positive predictor for mother and father aspirations, and mothers have lower aspirations for female than male children. (2) Higher children’s aspirations are significant predictors of staying in school, even after controlling for ability, socioeconomic, and demographic variables, and are more important than parental aspirations. (3) Mother’s aspirations are strongly correlated with children’s aspirations, but do not influence school continuation. In contrast, father’s aspirations do not predict children’s aspirations, but significantly influence school continuation, especially of boys. (4) Age increases the weight on father and child aspirations, suggesting that intrinsic motivation matters more at higher levels of education. (5) Income increases the weight on father aspirations, but decreases that of the child. These results support the inclusion of children’s preferences in household decision making models and human capital investment models, and provide insights into the intrinsic influences that affect intra-household decisions.Publication Promotion Incentives and Teacher Effort in China(2010-01-01) Karachiwalla, NaureenThis paper examines the effort incentives of teachers in rural China. China employs a complex system of annual evaluations and promotions for civil servants in which good evaluations, along with a teacher's years of service and education, make teachers eligible to apply for rank promotions. A model of promotions is developed in which agents are both incentivized, and are sorted into ranks by ability. The model's predictions are then tested using panel data on teachers collected as part of the Gansu Survey of Children and Families (GSCF). We find that teachers respond to promotion incentives as predicted by the model: salary differentials are used to motivate teachers to work harder and teachers do work hard for promotions; teachers that are repeatedly passed over for promotions tend to slack off, as do teachers that have been doing well in the past; increased competition in the form of more teachers increases incentives when the probability of promotion is between 1/3 and 2/3; and effort is low when the probability of promotion is close to zero or one.Publication "Old Man Moves a Mountain": Rural Parents' Involvement in their Children's Schooling(2008-01-01) Kong, P.In China, policies and programs are currently being implemented to improve parent-school relationships. However, until this thesis, there has been little research conducted in rural China on the impact of parental involvement on their children's education. In this thesis. I use a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate the nature of parental involvement in primary children's schooling in rural China. My study adds to the growing body of research that suggests that people in different cultures are involved in their children's schooling in different ways. I found that parents in rural China desired educational success for their children. They regarded education as a means to their children's gaining social mobility. However, few rural parents engaged in visible forms of parental involvement in their children's schools, such as attending parent-teacher meetings. Rural parents in my sample were caring, supportive, and had invisible ways of supporting their children's education. Their level of commitment to their children's schooling could be seen in the sacrifices they made, such as working at additional jobs or taking on additional household work so that their children could be free of household chores. Many rural parents sacrificed their free time in order to support their children's schooling. They also purchased schooling materials for their children, so that their children could enjoy a more positive schooling environment. In order to provide their children with better schooling opportunities, several families migrated to areas with better schooling conditions.Publication Human Capital in Developing Countries(2009-01-01) Shi, XinzhengMy dissertation investigates human capital issues, including education and health, in China. In the first chapter, I test for evidence of an intra-household flypaper effect by evaluating the impact of an educational fee reduction reform in rural China on different categories of household expenditures. Using data from Gansu Province in China, I find that educational fee reductions were matched by increased voluntary educational spending on the same children receiving fee reductions, providing strong evidence of an intra-household flypaper effect. The second chapter investigates the long-term effects of China’s 1959-1961 famine. Using China’s 2000 population census data, I find that women affected by the famine in the first year of life were living in smaller houses, achieved lower level of education, and provided less labor in their adulthood. But there are no long term effects on men affected by the famine in their early years of life. In the third chapter, I investigate the impact of school quality on students’ educational attainment using a regression discontinuity research design that compares students just above and below entrance examination score thresholds that strictly determine admission to the best high schools in China’s rural counties. Using data from Gansu Province in China, I find that attending the best high school in one’s county of residence decreases the probability to take college entrance examination; increases college entrance scores and the probability of entering college.Publication Parenting Practices and the Psychological Adjustment of Children in Rural China(2003-01-01) Liu, XiaodongIn this dissertation, guided by the conceptual framework of the ecological model, I investigated (1) the relationship between parental behaviors and children's psychological well-being in the contexts of family and community; and (2) the intermediate role that parental behaviors play in linking children's and other familial characteristics with children's mental health in a sample of 2000 children in rural northwest China. The hypotheses leading this study are that (1) the effects of parental behaviors on children's psychological adjustment differ depending upon familial and communal characteristics; (2) characteristics of children, families, and communities affect parenting behaviors, which, in turn, are directly linked to children's psychological adjustment. This dissertation is composed of a general introduction, three articles, and a general conclusion. Using multiple regression analysis, I inspected the relationships between parental behaviors and child psychological maladjustment in the first article. In the second article, multilevel regression analysis was used to examine the impacts of community SES and community environment of parenting on child maladjustment and on the parenting-child-development relationships. In the third article, I used structural equation modeling to test the mediating role of parental behaviors in connecting the paths from child characteristics and family variables to child internalizing and externalizing problems. Each article has its own abstract. This study is one of the first studies using a large-scale survey data to investigate the effect of parenting practices on children's psychological adjustment in a poor, rural population. The findings from this study not only contribute additional insight to our view of the variability that characterizes parental behaviors and children's developmental trajectories, but also serve as a guide for integrating family processes and communal contexts in prevention and intervention directed at children and adolescent psychological health in this under-studied population.Publication Family And School Impact On Psychological Functioning From Childhood To Late Adolescence: A Longitudinal Study Of Rural Chinese Youth(2018-01-01) Yue, YangThe transition from childhood to adolescence can be a significant stressor for youth, leading to increases in internalizing problems for those who are vulnerable. Compared to the mounting research conducted on U.S. youth, children and adolescents in China have received less attention on their psychological adjustment. As Chinese youth constitute roughly 15% of the world’s population (World Health Organization, 2010), and the disproportionate quantity of longitudinal investigation on Chinese youth psychological functioning, understanding the influence of risk and protective factors, and their interactive effects on internalizing problems among Chinese youth is critical. According to Life Course Theory, Ecological Systems Theory, and Risk and Resilience Framework, we need to look beyond one snapshot, one risk or protective factor and analyze the interactions among multiple factors nested in multiple environments across time. Unfortunately, the longitudinal investigation of perceived family and school experiences on youth psychological functioning in rural China is rare. Thus, this study investigated four research questions: 1. What is the nature of internalizing problems among rural Chinese youth? 2. Are gender and perceived school experiences associated with internalizing problems in childhood among rural Chinese youth? Are they associated with changes in internalizing problems from childhood to late adolescence among rural Chinese youth? 3. Do perceived parental behaviors moderate the effect of gender on internalizing problems in childhood among rural Chinese youth? Do perceived parental behaviors moderate the effect of gender on changes in internalizing problems among rural Chinese youth? 4. Do perceived parental behaviors moderate the effect of school experiences on internalizing problems in childhood among rural Chinese youth? Do perceived parental behaviors moderate the effect of perceived school experiences on changes in internalizing problems among rural Chinese youth? This study used data from Wave I (2000) to Wave III (2007) of the Gansu Survey of Children and Families, which is one of the first projects to obtain data at the individual and village levels in four waves from 2000 to 2009 in rural China (Gansu Survey of Children and Families [GSCF], 2010a). The time-varying dependent variable was internalizing problems measured by a summative scale adapted from the Child Behavior Checklist and Youth-Self Report. The Level-1 time-variant predictor was youth age. The Level-2 time-invariant predictor was child gender, and the Level-2 time-variant predictors included perceived parental warmth, lack of teacher support, and adverse classroom climate. Research questions were examined using two-level growth curve models with time nested in individuals. All multivariate data analyses were conducted using PROC MIXED in SAS v9.4. The results showed that on average levels of internalizing problems decreased over time among rural Chinese youth from childhood to late adolescence. In addition, youth gender was not associated with internalizing problems, there were no differences between boys and girls in childhood in internalizing problems nor were their differences between boys and girls in changes in internalizing problems. As for perceived lack of teacher support and adverse classroom climate, both had positive effects on childhood internalizing problems. Youth who reported less lack of teacher support and adversity in their classrooms were predicted to have lower levels of internalizing problems. In addition, teacher support was also related to changes in internalizing problems from childhood to adolescence. Youth who reported more lack of teacher support were predicted to have a steep downward trajectory of internalizing problems in the developmental period examined, which indicates the effect of lack of teacher support is more detrimental in childhood compared to adolescence. Furthermore, parental warmth moderated the relationship between lack of teacher support and childhood internalizing problems. Lack of teacher support had a less impact on internalizing problems in childhood when youth perceived higher levels of parental warmth. Also, parental warmth moderated the relationship between adversity in classroom and changes in internalizing problems from childhood to adolescence. Adverse classroom climate had a less impact on the internalizing problems trajectory when youth perceived higher levels of parental warmth. The current investigation adds to the literature by examining the unique and interactive effects of individual characteristics, family and school experiences on internalizing symptoms from childhood to late adolescence. Results of the current study emphasize the importance of fostering responsive and supportive relationships within the family and school contexts early on and continually. Social workers in China have the potential to engage large teachers, students and school personnel to promote changes in rural school contexts and consult parents on strategies to improve family context. Social workers in China are also well positioned to advocate for national mental health policies that recognize and address mental health problems among rural youth.