Although health is an important factor in economic development, millions of China's rural residents have no medical coverage. Nearly 10 percent of those that were sick in rural China consciously did not seek medical care, mostly because of financial constraints. More than 25% of rural residents...

The overall goal of this study is to examine if there is a dropout problem in rural China and to explore the effectiveness of a Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programme on the rate of dropping out. To meet this goal, we conduct a randomised controlled trial (RCT) to assess the impact of the CCT...

A significant gap remains between rural and urban students in the rate of admission to senior high school. One reason for this gap may be high tuition and other school fees at the senior high school level. By reducing student expectations of attending high school, high tuition and school fees...

We report on the results of a randomised controlled trial conducted among over 2,000 children in 60 elementary schools in rural Shaanxi Province, North-west China. We find that providing children with daily iron supplements for six months improved children's haemoglobin levels and standardised...

Recruiting and retaining leaders and public servants at the grass-roots level in developing countries creates a potential tension between providing sufficient returns to attract talent and limiting the scope for excessive rent-seeking behavior. In China, researchers have frequently argued that...

Purpose – The paper aims to discuss whether the younger generation of China's rural labor force is prepared, in terms of education level or labor quality, for the future labor markets under China's industrial upgrading. Design/methodology/approach – Using nationally representative survey...

Purpose – Since 1999, China has undergone reform of its healthcare system. City-based social health insurance (SHI) is the primary form of current health insurance, supplemented by various commercial health insurance programs. The rural new cooperative medical system (NCMS) was introduced in...

This paper, using unique survey data from the banking industry in rural China, investigates the effect of incentive contracts on performance. In the context of China's economic transition, we find that the incentive contracts have a positive effect on the bank manager's performance in deposit...