The intergenerational legacy of the 1959-1961 Great Chinese Famine on children's cognitive development.

ABSTRACT

We investigate the effect of early exposure to malnutrition on the cognitive abilities of the offspring of survivors in the context of a natural experiment; i.e., the Great Chinese Famine (GCF) of 1959-61. We employ a novel dataset - the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) - to do so. The paper finds that the cognitive abilities of children whose fathers were born in rural areas during the famine years (1959-1961) were impaired by exposure to the GCF and the negative effect was greater for girls than boys, whereas children whose mothers were born in rural areas during the famine years were not affected. The uncovered gender-specific effect is almost entirely attributable to son preference exhibited in families with male famine survivors.