TY  - JOUR
AU  - Almond,Douglas
AU  - Edlund,Lena
AU  - Li,Hongbin
AU  - Zhang,Junsen
TI  - Long-Term Effects Of The 1959-1961 China Famine: Mainland China and Hong Kong
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13384
PY  - 2007
Y2  - September 2007
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13384
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13384.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Douglas Almond
Department of Economics
Columbia University
International Affairs Building, MC 3308
420 West 118th Street
New York, NY 10027
Tel: 212/854-3680
Fax: 212/854-3239
E-Mail: da2152@columbia.edu

Lena Edlund
Department of Economics
Columbia University
International Affairs Building, MC 3308
420 W 118th Street
New York, NY 10027
E-Mail: le93@columbia.edu

Hongbin Li
E-Mail: lihongbin@sem.tsinghua.edu.cn

Junsen Zhang
Department of Economics
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Shatin, N.T.
Hong Kong
E-Mail: jszhang@cuhk.edu.hk
AB  - This paper estimates the effects of maternal malnutrition exploiting the 1959-1961 Chinese famine as a natural experiment. In the 1% sample of the 2000 Chinese Census, we find that fetal exposure to acute maternal malnutrition had compromised a range of socioeconomic outcomes, including: literacy, labor market status, wealth and marriage market outcomes. Women married spouses with less education and later, as did men, if at all. In addition, maternal malnutrition reduced the sex ratio (males to females) in two generations -- those prenatally exposed and their children -- presumably through heightened male mortality. This tendency toward female offspring is interpretable in light of the Trivers-Willard (1973) hypothesis, according to which parents in poor condition should skew the offspring sex ratio toward daughters. Hong Kong natality micro data from 1984-2004 further confirm this pattern of female offspring among mainland-born residents exposed to malnutrition in utero. 
ER  -