Purpose – Internationally, microfinance run by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) is often considered an important approach to meeting the credit demand of rural households, particularly among the poor. However, the perceived competitions with formal financial institutions and concerns...

Purpose – Rural China has been undergoing the “religion fever” since the Reform and Opening-up. By comparing the intergenerational lock-in effects of religious belief with that of non-religious belief, the purpose of this paper is to explain why more and more peasants convert to religion...

Purpose Although access to safe drinking water is one of the most important health-related infrastructure programs in the world, drinking water remains a large problem in China today, especially in rural areas. Despite increased government investment in water resource protection and management,...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper aims to explore how borrower and group‐level characteristics affect repayment decisions of group borrowers by highlighting the case of rural credit cooperatives (RCCs) in Guizhou province in Southwest China. Design/methodology/approach – The Logit model...

Purpose – After two decades of village elections, the quality of village elections, rather than the utility of village elections, becomes the focus of current research. Based on nationally representative data at the village level, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of...

Purpose The infrastructure investment is one important source of economic growth in China in the past three decades. However it is not clear to what extent such investment affects development in rural area. The purpose of this paper is to explore this impact both conceptually and quantitatively,...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effect of adult children migration on the health status of elderly parents. Increased labor migration in developing countries that lack adequate social security systems and institutionalized care for the elderly is a phenomenon that is...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to produce a high-quality measure of the nature of healthcare resources available in China’s Township Health Centers (THCs), paying particular attention to equity between high- and low-income areas. Design/methodology/approach This study makes use of data...

Purpose Recent research into enterprise performance has focussed on the importance of firm proximity to total productivity. Using spatial correlation of firm performance as a proxy for knowledge transfers and diffusion, the purpose of this paper is to examine the evidence for these spatial...