Participating in and presenting gifts at funerals, weddings, and other ceremonies held by friends and neighbors have been regarded as social norms in many parts of the world for thousands of years. However, due to the reciprocal nature of gift giving, it is more burdensome for the poor to take...

Participating in and presenting gifts at funerals, weddings, and other ceremonies held by friends and neighbors have been regarded as social norms in many parts of the world for thousands of years. However, due to the reciprocal nature of gift giving, it is more burdensome for the poor to take...

Chinese farmers rely increasingly on nonfarm activities to enhance their incomes. Previous studies identify human capital as a key factor in the selection of workers in the rural nonfarm sector, but these studies ignore the role of social networks, i.e., guanxi. Using data from a detailed...

An open question in the literature is whether families compensate or reinforce the impact of child health shocks. Discussions usually focus on one dimension of child investment. This paper examines multiple dimensions using household survey data on Chinese child twins whose average age is 11. We...

An open question in the literature is whether families compensate or reinforce the impact of child health shocks. Discussions usually focus on one dimension of child investment. This paper examines multiple dimensions using household survey data on Chinese child twins whose average age is 11. We...

This paper examines whether migration of adult children adversely affects the health of the left-behind elderly in rural China. Establishing causal effect is complicated by the fact that there may be unobserved factors influencing both child migration and health of the elderly. I address this...

Informal eldercare is often supplied by family members, more so in Asia than in the West. Children and their parents as well as members of adjacent generations linked by marriage (in-laws) are modeled as self-interested agents offering or responding to material incentives. A first implication...

The purpose of this article is to analyse the influence of social class on nutrition knowledge and food preferences among Chinese urban adults with an emphasis on the middle class. The empirical investigations conducted as part of this research are based on data from the China Health and...

The purpose of this article is to analyse the influence of social class on nutrition knowledge and food preferences among Chinese urban adults with an emphasis on the middle class. The empirical investigations conducted as part of this research are based on data from the China Health and...

Using a sample of households in 48 Chinese villages for the period 1986-2002, this paper studies the dynamic effects of major health shocks on household income and the role played by village elections in mitigating these effects. Our results show that in the first 15 years after a shock, a...