This paper evaluates the effect of a free compulsory education reform in rural China on the incidence of child labor. We exploit the cross-province variation in the roll-out of the reform and apply a difference-in-differences strategy to identify the causal effects of the reform. We find that...

We present the first systematic study on child labor in China. Child labor is not a negligible social phenomenon in China; about 7.74% of children aged from 10 to 15 were working in 2010, and they worked for 6.75 hours per day on average, and spent 6.42 hours less per day on study than other...

Using a national representative sample, the China Family Panel Studies, this paper explores the influences of clan culture, a hallmark of Chinese cultural history, on the prevalence of child labor in China. We find that clan culture significantly reduces the incidence of child labor and working...

This paper examines the role of social learning in household enrollment decisions for the New Cooperative Medical Scheme in rural China by estimating a static game with incomplete information. Using a rich dataset from the China Health and Nutrition Survey, we find that the social network...

This paper investigates the impact of pension income on living arrangements of the elderly. Taking advantage of a unique opportunity due to the recent establishment and expansion of the social pension system in rural China, we explicitly address the endogeneity of pension status and income...

Since the reform and opening up in 1978, China has begun a period of rapid industrialization and urbanization. Along with an increasing number of rural people migrating to urban area for jobs, there are a considerable number of elderly parents left behind in the rural area. The impact of...

In general, the happiness literature has paid little attention to the relationship between physical appearance and well-being. In this paper, we examine the link between weight, height and well-being for three distinct samples in China given that attractiveness effects likely vary greatly across...

This paper exploits a quasi-natural experiment – the U.S. granting of Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) to China after China's accession to the World Trade Organization – to examine whether trade liberalization affects the incidence of child labor in China. PNTR permanently set U.S....

The paper studies the levels and changes in wage inequality among Chinese rural-urban migrants during 2002-2007. Using data from two waves of national household surveys, we find that wage inequality among migrants decreased significantly between 2002 and 2007. Our analysis on the wage...

China's new Labor Contract Law, which intended to strengthen the labor protection for workers, went into effect on January 1, 2008. The law stipulated that the maximum cumulative duration of successive fixed-term (temporary) labor contracts is 10 years, and employees working for the same...