Discovering childhood in contemporary China: Toward a multisystems perspective.

Despite the remarkable improvements that have been achieved in the field of child development in contemporary China, there remain daunting challenges. To explore and address these issues, we organize this special issue "Child development in contemporary China: Toward a multisystems perspective." In this collection, we introduce theoretically-informed empirical research conducted by scholars worldwide and organize these research articles into four general themes: policy/program intervention regarding child development, migration status and child development, parenting/grandparenting and child development, and school/after-school engagement and child development. These articles keep abreast of theoretical, methodological, and practical innovations in the field, aiming to provide new evidence to enrich the understanding of the patterns and potential mechanisms that would lead to a (dis)advantaged childhood in China.

The greener, the happier? The effects of greenspace on residents' happiness in contemporary urban China.

In recent years, research has begun to touch upon the associations between the natural environment and individuals' subjective wellbeing; however, whether such associations would vary among different groups of people remains under-studied. Using four waves (2010-2013) of data from the Chinese General Social Survey, we investigate the group-specific correlation between environment-specifically, greenspace exposure-and individuals' happiness in contemporary urban China. For this study, the normalized difference vegetation index at the county level is a proxy for greenspace exposure. The results from the ordered logit model indicate that county-level green vegetation is associated with individuals' happiness level, but such effects vary with a household's relative deprivation. While greenspace exposure is positively associated with happiness among individuals from less deprived families, it is negatively associated with happiness among those from deprived households. These findings contribute to the body of knowledge of the heterogeneous effect of greenspace on residents' subjective well-being.

Family status and women's career mobility during urban China's economic transition.

BACKGROUND: In contrast to the historical experience of Western welfare states, where social and family policies help create more integrated public-private spheres, marketization in China has presented a case of sphere separation. This phenomenon has important implications for the dynamics of gender inequality in economic transition. OBJECTIVE: This article examines how family status is associated with women's career mobility in reform-era urban China and the impact of family on women's career choices across different reform stages. METHOD: Based on retrospective data from the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) in 2008, we adopt discrete-time logit models to examine the effects of marriage and childbearing on women's upward mobility, the risk of labor market exit, and how the effects vary over time. RESULTS: Chinese women in the workforce are adversely affected by marriage and having dependent children. They are more likely than men to experience (involuntary, in particular) job exit to fulfill their roles as wives and mothers and less likely to move up in the career ladder. This pattern is more prominent as the economic reform proceeds. CONCLUSION: Marketization has adversely affected Chinese women's career outcomes by increasing work-family tension after the work unit (danwei) system and socialist programs that supported working women were scrapped. CONTRIBUTION: This study is one of the few empirical studies to attempt to explain the widening gender gap in China's job market from the perspective of family using the two-sphere separation framework. The framework originated in Western family studies but has been adapted to suit the context of urban China.

The Association Between PM2.5 and Depression in China.

While China has been experiencing unprecedented economic growth, depression is becoming one of the most striking social and mental health problems in recent years. Such a paradox to progress may partially be due to the notoriously poor air quality of the country. To verify this argument, we constructed an index of the prevalence of depression (IPD) using internet search query volumes in Baidu to proxy the potential depression and examined how IPD is associated with PM2.5, the major air pollutant in China. Our results from 2-way fixed effects models reveal that a 100 µg·m-3 increase in previous week's PM2.5 in a city is significantly associated with 0.279 increase in its IPD, comparable to 7.34 hours decrease in weekly daylight, and such relationship is particularly pronounced in the spring and summer and in East and South areas. Our findings of large-scale pattern suggest that PM2.5 at current levels in China poses serious mental health risks.

Migration status, emotional engagement, and social exclusion in Chinese schools.

INTRODUCTION: Since migration has become one of the pressing issues of our time, the school engagement of migrant children in the destination cities has drawn increasing scholarly attention. While most existing studies have focused on the cognitive and behavioral dimensions of school engagement of migrant children compared to local children, the emotional dimension has received less scholarly attention. Using a large-scale, national representative, school-level longitudinal survey data conducted in 2014 in China, this study examined the effect of migration status on children's emotional engagement in school. METHODS: This study was conducted with 15,872 Chinese junior high school students (mean age = 13.52, SD = 1.24) using ordered logistic regression. KHB mediation analysis was employed to explain migration-emotional engagement linkage. RESULTS: Compared with urban local children, both rural and urban migrant children are less likely to feel closely connected to their peers in school and are more likely to feel bored and to express escapism. The KHB mediation analysis further suggests that compared with the number of friends and proportions of the same-school friends, the percentages of local friends at the same school mediate most of the effect of migration status on all three measures of emotional engagement, particularly for rural migrant children. CONCLUSIONS: These findings revealed that although both social exclusion and the absence of friendship play statistically significant mediation roles, social exclusion is of vital importance in understanding the differences between migrant and local children in emotional engagement.

The association between PM2.5 exposure and suicidal ideation: a prefectural panel study.

BACKGROUND: Suicidal ideation is subject to serious underestimation among existing public health studies. While numerous factors have been recognized in affecting suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STB), the associated environmental risks have been poorly understood. Foremost among the various environment risks were air pollution, in particular, the PM2.5. The present study attempted to examine the relationship between PM2.5 level and local weekly index of suicidal ideation (ISI). METHODS: Using Internet search query volumes in Baidu (2017), the largest internet search engine in China, we constructed a prefectural panel data (278 prefectures, 52 weeks) and employed dynamic panel GMM system estimation to analyze the relationship between weekly concentration of PM2.5 (Mean = 87 µg·m- 3) and the index of suicidal ideation (Mean = 49.9). RESULTS: The results indicate that in the spring and winter, a 10 µg·m- 3 increase in the prior week's PM2.5 in a Chinese city is significantly associated with 0.020 increase in ISI in spring and a 0.007 increase in ISI in winter, after taking account other co-pollutants and meteorological conditions. CONCLUSION: We innovatively proposed the measure of suicidal ideation and provided suggestive evidence of a positive association between suicidal ideation and PM2.5 level.

Mapping Public Concerns of Electronic Cigarettes in China.

E-cigarettes have gained growing visibility in recent years. However, there lacks a panoramic image of e-cigarette concerns, particularly in low-income countries, such as China. Studying the public concern at a macro level may help reveal the development of the e-cigarette market, and potential health burden of a province as a whole, which is crucial for the policy regulation of the e-cigarette market, and for the allocation of medical resources in the future. In this research, we attempt to provide the first representative portrait of e-cigarette concerns by using the index of e-cigarette search (ICS), which is constructed by online query of e-cigarette-related words/phrases of 31 provinces spanning from 2011 to 2014 in Baidu, the most popular search engine in China. E-cigarette concerns in all Chinese provinces increased over the time span. Our results from fixed-effects models further show that ICS is positively associated with the number of beds in medical institutions and road density of the province, but negatively associated with the proportion of urban population. In sum, provincial health care, infrastructure and urbanization are pivotal in shaping e-cigarette concerns at the provincial level in China.

The Health Consequences of Social Mobility in Contemporary China.

Although numerous studies have shown the importance of an individual's socioeconomic status on his or her self-rated health status, less well-known is whether self-perceived class mobility, a measure highly correlated with an individual's de facto social class and past mobility experiences, affects self-rated health. In this paper, we attempt to fill the gap by examining how perception of class mobility is associated with self-rated health. Using eight waves of Chinese General Social Survey data spanning the years 2005 to 2015, we conducted an analysis at the micro (individual) level and the macro (provincial) level. Analyses at both levels yielded consistent results. At the individual level, we employed ordered logistic regression and found that the perception of experiencing downward mobility was associated with significantly lower self-rated health in both rural and urban areas compared with those who consider themselves to be upwardly mobile or immobile. At the provincial level, the findings from static panel analysis further revealed that there is a positive relationship between the self-perceived class mobility and self-rated health level.

Using the Baidu Search Index to Predict the Incidence of HIV/AIDS in China.

Based on a panel of 30 provinces and a timeframe from January 2009 to December 2013, we estimate the association between monthly human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) incidence and the relevant Internet search query volumes in Baidu, the most widely used search engine among the Chinese. The pooled mean group (PMG) model show that the Baidu search index (BSI) positively predicts the increase in HIV/AIDS incidence, with a 1% increase in BSI associated with a 2.1% increase in HIV/AIDS incidence on average. This study proposes a promising method to estimate and forecast the incidence of HIV/AIDS, a type of infectious disease that is culturally sensitive and highly unevenly distributed in China; the method can be taken as a complement to a traditional HIV/AIDS surveillance system.

Laugh and grow fat: Happiness affects body mass index among Urban Chinese adults.

Previous studies have extensively examined the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and subjective well-being (SWB) but have mainly focused on the effects of BMI on SWB, leaving the question of whether BMI can be influenced by SWB largely neglected. In this study, we present the first empirical evidence on the effects of SWB on BMI among adults, using data combined from four waves of the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) (2010-2013). We find that, among urban Chinese adults, those who have a higher level of happiness tend to have higher BMI, after extensively controlling for a constellation of individual sociodemographic and health attributes. Further analyses using the instrumental variable method and propensity score matching provided similar results.

Marketization, occupational segregation, and gender earnings inequality in urban China.

This article analyzes a large sample of the 2005 population mini-census data and prefecture-level statistics of China to investigate gender earnings inequality in the context of economic marketization, paying special attention to the changing role of occupational segregation in the process. We approximate marketization by employment sectors and also construct an index of marketization at the prefecture level. Results show that, despite the tremendous economic growth, marketization has exacerbated gender earnings inequality in urban China's labor markets. Gender earnings inequality is the smallest in government/public institutions, followed by public enterprises, and then private enterprises. The gender inequality also increases with the prefecture's level of marketization. Multilevel analyses show that occupational segregation plays an important role in affecting gender earnings inequality: the greater the occupational segregation, the more disadvantaged women are relative to men in earnings in a prefecture's labor market. Moreover, the impact of occupational segregation on gender earnings inequality increases with the prefectural level of marketization. These findings contribute to understanding the dynamics of gender earnings inequality and have important implications for policy to promote gender equality in urban China.