Although the past few decades have seen incomes rise and increased government commitment to helping the poor, there is concern that a large fraction of children in rural China still lack regular access to micronutrient-rich regular diets. Insufficient diets and poor knowledge of nutrition among low income populations can result in nutritional problems, including iron deficiency anemia, which adversely affect attention and learning in school. Surprisingly, there has been little research in China trying to document the prevalence of nutritional problems among certain vulnerable populations, such as school-aged children in rural areas. The absence of programs to combat iron deficiency anemia among students might be interpreted as a sign that the government does not recognize the severity of this problem. The goal of this paper is to increase our understanding of the extent of anemia among school-aged children in poor regions of Qinghai and Ningxia, and to identify structural correlates of anemia in this region. We report on the results of a cross-sectional survey involving over 4000 fourth grade students, from 76 randomly selected elementary schools in 10 poor counties in Qinghai Province and Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, in China’s poor northwest region. Data were collected through structured questionnaires and standardized tests. Trained professional nurses administered hemoglobin (Hb) tests (using Hemocue finger prick kits) and anthropomorphic measurements using high quality equipment. Our baseline data shows that the overall anemia rate is 34.5% (23.0%) using the World Health Organization’s blood Hb cutoff of 120g/L (115g/L). We find that students who live and eat at school have higher rates of anemia. Children with less-educated parents are more likely to be anemic. Higher anemia rates are associated with students with parents working on farms and away from home. Anemia rates are correlated with adverse physical (lower body mass index (BMI) z-scores and higher incidences of stunting), cognitive and psychological impacts among students. Such findings are consistent with recent findings of other studies in other poor areas in China’s Northwest.

Impact evaluation has become an increasingly integral part of development project design and execution in recent years. Many questions remain, however, about what methods yield the most compelling evaluations, and how best to implement them. The Rural Education Action Project (REAP) is among the most successful impact evaluation groups currently operating in China. The goal of this paper is to share five practical strategies that REAP has employed to maximize the effectiveness of our impact evaluations. These strategies include the use of randomization and other experimental and quasi experimental research designs; pursuit of local and international collaboration; strict attention to policy relevance; a modular, incremental research approach; and robust outreach. 

The overall goal of this paper is to try to understand in the context China’s middle school education system what is the tradeoff between community service and educational performance. In addition, we seek to understand some of the other effects of participation in community service activities. When students participate in community service, does their self-esteem rise and/or self-efficacy rise? Finally, we also want to know if students participate in community service activities will their sense of social responsibility rise.

Because the nature of this question is so broad we must necessarily reduce the scope of the paper. To do so, we study a community service program funded and run by a private US foundation in 592 junior high and high school classes in two counties in Shaanxi province. While we understand that there are many institutional and pedagogical issues that will affect the relationship among community service, grades and a sense of social responsibility (e.g., citation), we will focus our efforts on empirically evaluating the linkages. We also recognize that by focusing on the activities of an NGO in a single part of China that many of the findings will be affected by the context of the program. However, we also believe that we may be able to observe and measure more fundamental behavioral relationships. At the very least we seek to provide rigorous, statistically-based evidence from a case study which hopefully can be combined with other work to help us more fully understand community service, social responsibility and educational performance.

The education of the disadvantaged population has been a long-standing challenge to education systems in both developed and developing countries. Although computer-assisted learning (CAL) has been considered one alternative to improve learning outcomes in a cost-effective way, the empirical evidence of its impacts on improving learning outcomes is mixed. This paper uses a randomized field experiment to explore the effects of CAL on student academic and non-academic outcomes for students in migrant schools in Beijing. Our results show that a remedial CAL program held out of regular school hours improved the student standardized math scores by 0.15 standard deviations and most of the program effect took place within 2 months after the start of the program. Students with less-educated parents benefited more from the program. Moreover, CAL also significantly increased the students’ interest in learning