Stunting and selection effects of famine: A case study of the Great Chinese Famine

详细信息    查看全文

• 作者：Tue Gø ; rgens^a ;   ; ^{Tue.Gorgens@anu.edu.au} ; Xin Meng^b ;   ; ^{Xin.Meng@anu.edu.au} ; Rhema Vaithianathan^c ;   ; ^{R.Vaithianathan@auckland.ac.nz}
• 关键词：Famine ; Height ; China ; Panel data
• 刊名：Journal of Development Economics
• 出版年：2012
• 出版时间：January 2012
• 年：2012
• 卷：97
• 期：1
• 页码：99-111
• 全文大小：448 K

文摘

Many developing countries experience famine. If survival is related to height, the increasingly common practice of using height as a measure of well-being may be misleading. We devise a novel method for disentangling the stunting from the selection effects of famine. Using data from the 1959?961 Great Chinese Famine, we find that taller children were more likely to survive the famine. Controlling for selection, we estimate that children under the age of five who survived the famine grew up to be 1 to 2 cm shorter. Our results suggest that if a country experiences a shock such as famine, average height is potentially a biased measure of economic conditions during childhood.