Publications

We study the effect of a victimization narrative on national identity and public opinion in China experimentally. Previous research has suggested that governments can shape public opinion by guiding citizens’ collective memories of historical events, but few studies have established a clear causal link. By conducting an online survey experiment among 1890 urban Chinese citizens, we examine the causal impact of historical narratives on political attitudes. We find that, compared to control conditions, a narrative focusing on China’s humiliating past in the late Qing significantly reinforces respondents’ attachment to the victim side of the Chinese national identity, raises suspicion of the intention of foreign governments in international disputes, stimulates preference for more hawkish foreign policies, and strengthens support for China’s current political system. These effects are particularly strong among respondents without a college degree.

This study investigated the association between household characteristics, perceived family support (PFS), and the developmental outcomes (resilience, academic performance, and prosociality) among at-risk students. Our large sample included 1564 primary and secondary school students from poor rural China (M = 11.55 years old). Having a caregiver whose resilience score was in the top 50% of the sample was associated with a 0.48-point increase (or 0.31 d effect size), while having a migrant mother was correlated with a 0.26-point decrease (or 0.17 d effect size). PFS was a significant (p < 0.0001) mediator between household characteristics and developmental outcomes. Our study highlights the link between caregiver resilience and PFS, and the healthy functioning of disadvantaged students in a developing context.

Using administrative data on the Chinese National College Entrance Examination, we study how left-digit bias affects college applications. We find strong discontinuities in students' admission outcomes at 10-point thresholds. Students with scores just below multiples of 10 make more conservative college application choices that place them into less selective colleges and majors. In contrast, students who score at or just above multiples of 10 aim and achieve higher but are at greater risk of overshooting. The discontinuity reveals that, despite the educational and labor market consequences, students' self-evaluation based on exam scores is subject to information-processing heuristics.

Parental investment in the home language environment during the earliest years is a critical predictor of early language development. Because most studies investigating the home language environment and child language development have been conducted in Western, high-income, and developed settings, less is known about such environments in low- or middle-income settings. This study was conducted in a peri-urban area in Southwestern China in a sample of 81 rural migrant and urbanized farmer families with children aged 18-24 months. The home language environment was measured using Language Environment Analysis (LENA) recorders and software, while early language development was measured using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Developmental Inventories expressive vocabulary scale. Findings reveal large and substantial variation in the sample's home language environments and a strong association between the home language environment and child language development. Certain demographic characteristics, such as household resources, maternal employment, and gender, are associated with the home language environment. These findings highlight the needs for interventions specifically targeting the home language environment to improve early language development of young children and for more research on early childhood development in peri-urban China.

Using premier Language Environment Analysis technology to measure and analyze the home language environment, this observational study aims to describe the home language environment and child language ability, drawing on empirical data from 77 households with children aged 18–24 months from rural China. The results show large variation in measures of the home language environment and early language ability, similar to other rural Chinese samples. Results also demonstrate significant correlations between child age and the home language environment, maternal employment and the home language environment, father’s educational attainment and the home language environment, adult–child conversations and early language ability, and child vocalizations and early language ability.

Purpose: We examine how adolescent free time allocation—namely, screen time and outdoor time—is associated with mental health and academic performance in rural China.

Methods: This paper used a large random sample of rural junior high school students in Ningxia (n = 20,375; age=13.22), with data collected from self-reported demographic questionnaires (to assess free time allocation), the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (to assess mental health), and a standardized math test (to measure academic performance). We utilized a multivariate OLS regression model to examine associations between free time allocation and adolescent outcomes, controlling for individual and family characteristics.

Results: Our sample’s screen time and outdoor time both averaged around 1 hour. About 10% of the sample adolescents reported behavioral difficulties, while a similar percentage (11%) reported abnormal prosocial behaviors. Adolescents with higher levels of screen time (> 2 hours) were 3 percentage points more likely to have higher levels of behavioral difficulties (p< 0.001), indicating that excessive screen time was associated with worse mental health. Meanwhile, outdoor time was associated with better mental health, and positive correlations were observed at all levels of outdoor time (compared to no outdoor time, decreasing the likelihood of higher levels of behavioral difficulties by between 3 and 4 percentage points and of lower prosocial scores by between 6 and 8 percentage points; all p’s< 0.001). For academic performance, average daily screen times of up to 1 hour and 1– 2 hours were both positively associated with standardized math scores (0.08 SD, p< 0.001; 0.07 SD, p< 0.01, respectively), whereas there were no significant associations between outdoor time and academic performance.

Conclusion: Using a large sample size, this study was the first to examine the association between adolescent free time allocation with mental health and academic performance, providing initial insights into how rural Chinese adolescents can optimize their free time.

Background
Mothers’ perception of infant hunger cues is a critical content of responsive feeding, which is central to the promotion of early childhood development. However, only a few studies have examined responsive feeding in China, especially lacking the studies on perceptions of infant hunger cues. Consider the cultural differences, the aim of this study was to describe the perceptions of infant hunger cues of Chinese mothers for infants aged 3 months, and explore the relationship between maternal perceptions of infant hunger cues and different feeding methods.

Methods
A cross-sectional study was conducted with a sample of 326 mothers of healthy 3-month-old infants, including 188 exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) mothers and 138 formula feeding (FF) mothers. It was implemented in four provincial and municipal maternal and child health hospitals. The mothers’ perceptions of infant hunger cues were surveyed by self-reporting questionnaires. Chi-square tests and logistic analysis were applied to analyze the differences in maternal perceptions of infant hunger cues, including the number of hunger cues and the specific cues, between EBF group and FF group by controlling sociodemographic variables and the daily nursing indicators.

Results
We found that a higher proportion of EBF mothers could perceive multiple hunger cues (≥ 2) than FF mothers (66.5% vs.55.1%). For specific cues, the EBF mothers had higher perceptions of infant’s “hand sucking” (67.6% vs. 53.6%) and “moving head frantically from side to side” (34.6% vs. 23.9%), all p < 0.05. Regression analysis revealed that EBF might support mothers to perceive infant hunger cues than FF mothers, with the number of infant hunger cues (OR = 1.70, 95% CI: 1.01–2.85), “hand sucking” (OR = 1.72, 95% CI: 1.04–2.87), “moving head frantically from side to side” (OR = 2.07, 95% CI: 1.19–3.62). The number of infant hunger cues perceived by mothers was also associated with their educational level and family structure.

Conclusion
EBF mothers of 3-month-old infants may be more likely to perceive infant hunger cues than FF mothers in China. It is necessary to increase the health education about infant hunger and satiety cues to caregivers in China, especially among mothers with lower education levels, mothers living in nuclear families, and FF mothers.

According to World Bank data, only a handful of economies have risen from middle to high-income status since 1960, when economic catch-up growth in many developing economies took off. This article looks at how China compares to other countries stuck at the middle-income level.

Background
A rich language environment is an important element of a nurturing home environment. Despite their proven importance, vocabulary and conversation have been shown to vary widely across households—even within the same socio-economic class. One significant gap in the existing literature is its nearly exclusive geographic focus on Western and developed settings, with little attention given to poorer communities in lower/middle income countries. The purpose of this study was to empirically illustrate the characteristics of the home language environment in the low SES, non-Western cultural setting of rural China.

Methods
Using Language Environment Analysis (LENA) automated language-analysis system, this study measured the home language environment of 38 children aged 20-27 months in Northwest rural China. Our primary measures of the home language environment were Adult Word Count (AWC), Conversational Turn Count (CTC) and Child Vocalization Count (CVC). Multivariate linear regression models were used to examine the association between home language environment and family/child characteristics, and language skills (Measured by MacArthur-Bates Communicative Developmental Inventory score).

Results
In this paper, by comparison, we found that the home language environment of our rural sample fell far behind that of urban households. We also identify significant, positive correlations between language skills and both AWC and CTC. Our analysis finds no significant correlations between home language environment and family/child characteristics.

Conclusion
In this paper, we present the first ever findings using the LENA system to measure the home language environment of young children from poor rural communities in China. We found that the home language environment of lower-SES household was significantly worse than high-SES households, and demonstrated the importance of the home language environment to language skills, pointing to a need for more high-quality studies of the home language environment in rural China to better understand possible mechanisms behind low levels of parent-child language engagement and ways to improve the home language environment.

We link industrial clusters, regional productivity and resource reallocation efficiency with geographical and sectoral disaggregated data. Based on a county-industry level panel from 1998 to 2007 in China, we find that industrial clusters significantly increase local industries' productivity by lifting the average firm productivity and reallocating resources from less to more productive firms. Moreover, we find major mechanisms through which resource reallocation is improved within clusters: (i) clusters are associated with a higher firm turnover with increased entry and exit rates simultaneously; and (ii) within clusters' environment, the dispersion of individual firm's markup is significantly reduced, indicating intensified local competition within clusters. Such results suggest that industrial clusters in China help improve regional productivity and resource allocation efficiency with intensified competition and accelerated firm dynamics. The identification issues are carefully addressed by two-stage estimations with instrumental variables and other robustness checks.

In each of the three waves of the Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports, the US government exempted some products on the originally proposed list from additional duties. Using these exempted products as the counterfactual, we identify modest but heterogeneous impacts of the tariffs on the value of US imports from China. We find a complete pass-through for the first and second waves of tariffs. However, unlike in previous studies, we estimate a very limited tariff pass-through of the third wave of tariffs. Finally, we find little import diversion for the US and significant export diversion for China.

Research suggests that elements of the family environment may have significant associations with cognitive and language development outcomes. Less is known, however, about the family environment in peri-urban China, where rates of cognitive and language delay in children aged 0-3 years are as high as 51% and 54%, respectively. Using data collected from 81 peri-urban households with toddlers aged 18-24 months in Southwestern China, this study examines the associations between stimulating parenting practices, the home language environment, and parental self-efficacy, with cognitive and language development. The results indicate that stimulating parenting practices was significantly associated with cognitive development, the home language environment was significantly associated with language development, and parental self-efficacy was significantly associated with cognitive development. The implications of such findings reveal several mechanisms for supporting healthy cognitive and language development among toddlers from peri-urban China.

Introduction Millions of young rural children in China still suffer from poor health and malnutrition, partly due to a lack of knowledge about optimal perinatal and child care among rural mothers and caregivers. Meanwhile, there is an urgent need to improve maternal mental health in rural communities. Comprehensive home visiting programmes delivered by community health workers (CHWs) can bridge the caregiver knowledge gap and improve child health and maternal well-being in low-resource settings, but the effectiveness of this approach is unknown in rural China. Additionally, grandmothers play important roles in child care and family decision-making in rural China, suggesting the importance of engaging multiple caregivers in interventions. The Healthy Future programme seeks to improve child health and maternal well-being by developing a staged-based curriculum that CHWs deliver to mothers and caregivers of young children through home visits with the assistance of a tablet-based mHealth system. This protocol describes the design and evaluation plan for this programme.

Methods and analysis We designed a cluster-randomised controlled trial among 119 rural townships in four nationally designated poverty counties in Southwestern China. We will compare the outcomes between three arms: one standard arm with only primary caregivers participating in the intervention, one encouragement arm engaging primary and secondary caregivers and one control arm with no intervention. Families with pregnant women or infants under 6 months of age are invited to enrol in the 12-month study. Primary outcomes include children’s haemoglobin levels, exclusive breastfeeding rates and dietary diversity in complementary feeding. Secondary outcomes include a combination of health, behavioural and intermediate outcomes.

At SCCEI, we aim to shed some light on what actually is happening in China, and exactly how these happenings might affect the rest of the world. The 2021-2022 academic year was an unprecedented year of growth for our Center. Take a look at our 2021-22 Annual Report to see all of the incredible work and accomplishments we have achieved together. Download your copy or read it online.

After nearly two decades of rising wages for those in the unskilled sectors of China's economy, in the mid-2010s employment and wages in China began to experience new polarizing trends. Using data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China, this paper examines trends in multiple sectors and subeconomies of China, revealing the substantial rise of employment in informal, low-skilled services as well as the steady decline of wage growth in the informal subeconomy. At the same time, we find that although employment growth in the formal subeconomy is relatively moderate, wage growth in high-skilled services is steadily rising. These two trends pose a challenge for China, presenting a new and uncertain period of economic change.

Background

The WHO recommends daily use of micronutrient powder for infants and toddlers at risk of micronutrient deficiencies in low-and-middle-income countries. China has established a micronutrient powder distribution program in many rural townships and villages, yet adherence to micronutrient powder remains suboptimal; a little is known about the behavioral inputs that may influence adherence. This study examines direct and indirect behavioral inputs in micronutrient powder adherence among caregivers in rural western China following the Integrated Behavioral Model (IBM) framework.

Methods

Cross-sectional data were collected from April to May 2019 among 958 caregivers of children aged 6 to 24 months in six counties. Data were collected on micronutrient powder adherence behavior, direct behavioral inputs (knowledge and skills, intention, salience, environmental constraints, and habits), and indirect behavioral inputs (attitudes, perceived social norms, and personal agency). Structural equation modeling (SEM) adjusted for sociodemographic covariates was used to evaluate the IBM framework.

Results

Mean micronutrient powder adherence in the previous seven days was 53.02%, and only 22.86% of caregivers consistently fed micronutrient powder from the start of micronutrient powder distribution at six months of age. The SEM model revealed small- to medium-sized effects of salience (β = 0.440, P < 0.001), intention (β = 0.374, P < 0.001), knowledge and skills (β = 0.214, P < 0.001), personal agency (st. effect = 0.172, P < 0.001), environmental constraints (β=-0.142, P < 0.001), and caregiver generation (β = 0.119, P < 0.05) on micronutrient powder adherence. Overall, 54.7% of the variance in micronutrient powder adherence was explained by the IBM framework. Salience had the largest impact on micronutrient powder adherence (Cohen’s f 2 = 0.227). Compared to parent caregivers, grandparents had a higher degree of micronutrient powder adherence on average (P < 0.001), and behavioral inputs were consistent among both parent and grandparent caregivers.

Conclusion

There is a need to improve micronutrient powder adherence among rural caregivers. The IBM framework showed a high degree of explanatory power in predicting micronutrient powder adherence behavior. The findings suggest that increased reminders from doctors regarding micronutrient powder and coaching to improve personal agency in micronutrient powder feeding may increase adherence.

Despite major advancements in China’s K-12 educational outcomes over the past several decades, large regional inequities in academic achievement still exist, a proximal cause of which are gaps in teaching quality. Although conventional approaches to improving teaching quality for disadvantaged populations have overall been unsuccessful in China (i.e., student relocation to better-resourced urban schools, attracting high-quality teachers to low-resource rural schools, and rural teacher training), technology-assisted instruction may play a role in bridging these gaps. This paper explores why conventional approaches to improving teaching have not been effective in rural China and then describes the potential applications of technology-assisted instruction based on the small but growing body of empirical literature evaluating such interventions in other low- and middle-income countries. The paper concludes that while other (non-tech) interventions have thus far been ineffective at raising teaching quality, China may be uniquely positioned to harness technology-assisted instruction due to a favorable ecosystem for the scaling of EdTech in rural areas, though much more experimental research is necessary to assess which approaches and technologies are most cost-effective and how to best scale them.

This paper estimates the labor market impacts of parenthood in China. We find that becoming a mother has negative impacts on women's labor outcomes. But the impacts appear to recover sooner than what has been found in other countries. A decomposition exercise suggests that parenthood plays a limited role in explaining the large gender inequality in China's labor market. We document a form of intergenerational arrangement that is prevalent among Chinese families: Upon the arrival of a child, grandmothers substantially reduce market labor supply and provide much of the childcare. Grandparents’ help with childcare likely plays an important role in alleviating the motherhood effect. Suggestive evidence indicates that in return, grandparents who help with childcare receive more intra-family transfers and report higher subjective wellbeing. We further show that the motherhood effect, though relatively small, has increased substantially over the past decades. The rising gender gap in the labor market, the declining state sector that historically provides more flexible accommodations for working mothers, and the abolishment of the one-child policy all suggest a rising burden of motherhood on labor market outcomes.

Family-level factors that characterize the home environment are critical inputs to early language and cognitive development, and potential mechanisms for improving developmental outcomes in vulnerable populations. Many studies conducted in high-income and Western settings highlight stimulating parenting, the home language environment, and parental self-efficacy as possible mechanisms of early development, though less is known about how these family-level factors impact child development in low- or middle-income settings. Even less is known about these family-level factors and early childhood development in rural China, where rates of cognitive and language delay in children aged 0–3 years are as high as 45% and 46%, respectively. Using data collected from 77 rural households with children aged 18–24 months in Southwestern China, this study examines the associations between stimulating parenting, the home language environment, and parental self-efficacy, and early cognitive and language development. The results indicate that stimulating parenting was significantly associated with cognitive, language, and overall development; the home language environment was only significantly associated with language development; and parental self-efficacy was not significantly associated with any developmental outcomes. The implications of such findings reveal mechanisms for supporting healthy child development in rural China.

As digital devices like computers become more widely available in developing countries, there is a growing need to understand how the time that adolescents spend using these devices for recreational purposes such as playing video games is linked with their mental health outcomes. We measured the amount of time that adolescents in rural China spent playing video games and the association of video game time with their mental health. We collected data from primary and junior high schools in a poor, rural province in northwest China (n = 1603 students) and used the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scales (DASS-21) to measure mental health symptoms. The results indicated that the average video game time was about 0.69 h per week. There was a significant association between adolescent video game time and poorer mental health. Each additional hour of playing video games also increased the chance of having moderate or above symptoms. Moreover, boys and non-left-behind children had worse mental health if they played more video games. Our study contributes to literature on the links between recreational screen time and mental health, and it sheds light on an issue addressed by recent government legislation to limit the video game time of minors in China.

Over the past two decades, the literature has shown a clear gradient between child health and wealth. The same health–wealth gradient is also observed among children in China, with a large gap in health between rural and urban children. However, there are still unanswered questions about the main causes of China’s rural–urban child health inequality. This paper aims to review the major factors that have led to the relatively poor levels of health among China’s rural children. In addition to the direct income effect on children’s health, children in rural areas face disadvantages compared with their urban counterparts from the beginning of life: Prenatal care and infant health outcomes are worse in rural areas; rural caregivers have poor health outcomes and lack knowledge and support to provide adequate nurturing care to young children; there are large disparities in access to quality health care between rural and urban areas; and rural families are more likely to lack access to clean water and sanitation. In order to inform policies that improve health outcomes for the poor, there is a critical need for research that identifies the causal drivers of health outcomes among children. Strengthening the pediatric training and workforce in rural areas is essential to delivering quality health care for rural children. Other potential interventions include addressing the health needs of mothers and grandparent caregivers, improving parenting knowledge and nurturing care, improving access to clean water and sanitation for remote families, and most importantly, targeting poverty itself.

The self-esteem of students may be significantly associated with their academic performance. However, past research in developing contexts on this issue is limited, particularly among early adolescents. Using a sample of 3101 students from rural primary and junior high schools in China, this study measured their self-esteem by the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) and explored its association with academic performance. Our findings indicate that students in rural China had both significantly lower self-esteem and a higher prevalence of low self-esteem when compared to past studies of similarly aged students both from urban China and internationally. Furthermore, there was a strong positive correlation between a student’s self-esteem and academic performance. A one-SD increase in RSES score (indicating better self-esteem) was associated with an increase of 0.12 SD in standardized math scores (p < 0.001), and students with low self-esteem (RSES score < 25) scored lower on math tests by 0.14 SD (p < 0.001), which were robust and consistent when employing the propensity score matching method. Our study expands the growing body of empirical evidence on the link between self-esteem and academic performance among rural youth in developing countries and emphasizes the need to improve their self-esteem with the aim of helping them achieve academically.

This paper empirically investigates the labor market effects of China’s 2007 VAT reform, which significantly reduced the tax cost of capital investment. Employing city-by-year variation in the reform, we demonstrate that the tax cuts increased the earnings of skilled workers and left the earnings of the unskilled workers unaffected. Moreover, we find limited impacts of the reform on employment for both skill groups. These results suggest that the tax incentives increased the relative demand for skills, thus resulting in a higher income inequality between skilled and unskilled workers.

As part of its effort to balance economic development with environmental objectives, China has established a new national park system, with the first five locations formally established in 2021. However, as the new parks all host or are proximate to human populations, aligning the socioeconomic needs and aspirations of local communities with conservation aims is critical for the long-term success of the parks. In this narrative review, the authors identify the ecological priorities and socioeconomic stakeholders of each of the five national parks; explore the tensions and synergies between these priorities and stakeholders; and synthesize the policy recommendations most frequently cited in the literature. A total of 119 studies were reviewed. Aligning traditional livelihoods with conservation, limiting road construction, promoting education and environmental awareness, and supporting the development of a sustainable tourism industry are identified as important steps to balance conservation with economic development in the new national parks.

One out of every three children under age 5 in developing countries lives in conditions that impede human capital development. In this study, we survey the literature on parenting training programs implemented before age 5, with the aim to increase parental investment in human capital accumulation in developing countries. Our review focuses on the implementation and effectiveness of parenting training programs (i.e., training in child psychosocial stimulation and/or training about nutrition). We emphasize the mechanisms that drive treatment-induced change in human capital outcomes and identify the demand- and supply-side behaviors that affect efficacy and effectiveness. Although the literature includes evidence on program features that are associated with successful interventions, further evidence on the dynamics of human capital formation, documentation of medium- to long-term persistence of treatment impacts, and research on the implementation and evaluation of programs at scale are needed to delineate a scalable and inclusive program that provides long-term treatment impacts.