In late January 2020, China’s government initiated its first aggressive measures to combat COVID-19 by forbidding individuals from leaving their homes, radically limiting public transportation, cancelling or postponing large public events, and closing schools across the country. The rollout of these measures coincided with China’s Lunar New Year holiday, during which more than 280 million people had returned from their places of work to their home villages in rural areas. The disease control policies remained in place until late February and early March, when they were gradually loosened to allow for more free movement of people. Among those that were allowed to move again were the hundreds of millions of migrant workers who originally (before the COVID-19 outbreak) had expected to return to China’s urban and industrial centers to continue working in the nation’s factories, construction sites and service sector. 

Background:
Empirical evidence suggests that the uptake of maternal and child health (MCH) services is still low in poor rural areas of China. There is concern that this low uptake may detrimentally affect child health outcomes. Previous studies have not yet identified the exact nature of the impact that a conditional cash transfer (CCT) has on the uptake of MCH services and, ultimately, on child health outcomes. The objective of this study is to examine the relationship between CCT, uptake of MCH services, and health outcomes among children in poor rural areas of western China.

Methods:
We designated two different sets of villages and households that were used as comparisons against which outcomes of the treated households could be assessed. In 2014, we conducted a large-scale survey of 1522 households in 75 villages (including 25 treatment and 50 comparison) from nine nationally designated poverty counties in two provinces of China. In each village, 21 households were selected based on their eligibility status for the CCT program. Difference-in-difference analyses were used to assess the impact of CCT on outcomes in terms of both intention-to-treat (ITT) and average-treatment-effects-on-the-treated (ATT).

Results:
Overall, the uptake of MCH services in the sample households were low, especially in terms of postpartum care visits, early breastfeeding, exclusive breastfeeding, and physical examination of the baby. The uptake of the seven types of MCH services in the CCT treatment villages were significantly higher than that in the comparison villages. The results from both the ITT and ATT analyses showed that the CCT program had a positive, although small, impact on the uptake of MCH services and the knowledge of mothers of MCH health issues. Nonetheless, the CCT program had no noticeable effect on child health outcomes.

Conclusions:
The CCT program generated modest improvements in the uptake of MCH services and mothers’ knowledge of MCH services in poor rural areas of Western China. These improvements, however, did not translate into substantial improvements in child health outcomes for two potential reasons: poor CCT implementation and the low quality of rural health facilities.

Previous studies reflect a high prevalence of depressive symptoms among Taiwanese adolescents (ages 13–18), but there is an absence of literature related to the risk of depression of children in Taiwan (ages 6–12), particularly among potentially vulnerable subgroups. To provide insight into the distribution of depressive symptoms among children in rural Taiwan and measure the correlation between academic performance, we conducted a survey of 1655 randomly selected fourth and fifth-grade students at 92 sample schools in four relatively low-income counties or municipalities. Using the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression Scale (CES-D) we assessed the prevalence of depressive symptoms in this sample, in addition to collecting other data, such as performance on a standardized math test as well as information on a number of individual and household characteristics. We demonstrate that the share of children with clinically significant symptoms is high: 38% of the students were at risk of general depression (depression score ≥ 16) and 8% of the students were at risk of major depression (depression score > 28). The results of the multivariate regression and heterogeneous analysis suggest that poor academic performance is closely associated with a high prevalence of depressive symptoms. Among low-performing students, certain groups were disproportionately affected, including girls and students whose parents have migrated away for work. Results also suggest that, overall, students who had a parent who was an immigrant from another country were at greater risk of depression. These findings highlight the need for greater resource allocation toward mental health services for elementary school students in rural Taiwan, particularly for at-risk groups. 

This study examines the impact of social engagement on elderly health in China. A two-stage residual inclusion (2SRI) regression approach was used to examine the causal relationship. Our dataset comprises 9253 people aged 60 or above from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey (CHARLS) conducted in 2011 and 2013. Social engagement significantly improved the self-rated health of the elderly and reduced mental distress, but had no effect on chronic disease status. Compared with the rural areas, social engagement played a more important role in promoting the elderly health status in urban areas. Social engagement could affect the health status of the elderly through health behavior change and access to health resources. To improve the health of the elderly in China and promote healthy aging, the government should not only improve access to effective medical care but also encourage greater social engagement of the elderly.

China’s rapid urbanization in the past several decades have been accompanied by rural labor migration. An important question that has emerged is whether rural labor migration has a positive or negative impact on the depressive symptoms of children left behind in the countryside by their migrating parents. This paper uses a nationally representative panel dataset to investigate whether parental migration impacts the prevalence of depressive symptoms among left-behind children in China. Using DID and PSM-DID methods, our results show that parental migration significantly increases the depression scores of 10 and 11-year-old children by 2 points using the CES-D depression scale. Furthermore, we also find that the negative effect of decreased parental care is stronger than the positive effect of increased income in terms of determining the depressive symptoms status of children in rural China.

We report on the results of a randomised controlled trial conducted among over 2,000 children in 60 elementary schools in rural Shaanxi Province, North-west China. We find that providing children with daily iron supplements for six months improved children’s haemoglobin levels and standardised maths scores. In comparison, educating parents about nutrition and anaemia in a special parents meeting produced a modest impact on children’s haemoglobin levels. We also find heterogeneous intervention effects by children’s gender, anaemia status and boarding status. Overall, iron supplementation is more effective. However, given its low cost and simple implementation, parental education should still be considered.