Is effective social protection an investment with long-term benefits? Does inequality impede growth? Household panel data on incomes in rural China offer some answers. Theoretical work has shown that nonlinear dynamics in household incomes can yield poverty traps and distribution-dependent...

Ravallion tests for external effects of local economic activity on consumption and income growth at the farm-household level using panel data from four provinces of post-reform rural China. The tests allow for nonstationary fixed effects in the consumption growth process. Evidence is found of...

The paper revisits the site of a large, World Bank-financed, rural development program in China 10 years after it began and four years after disbursements ended. The program emphasized community participation in multi-sectoral interventions (including farming, animal husbandry, infrastructure...