In response to concerns over the vulnerability of the young in the wake of Indonesia's 1997-1998 economic crises, the Government of Indonesia implemented a supplementary feeding program to support early childhood nutritional status. This paper exploits heterogeneity in duration of program...

This paper presents empirical evidence from household and firm survey data collected during 2009-2010 on the implementation of the 2008 Labor Contract Law and its effects on China's workers. The government and local labor bureaus have made substantial efforts to enforce the provisions of the new...

This paper highlights the employment patterns of China’s over 45 population and, for perspective, places them in the context of work and retirement patterns in Indonesia, Korea, the United States, and the United Kingdom. As is common in many developing countries, China can be characterized as...

In this paper, we examine the impact of reductions in barriers to migration on the consumption of households in rural China. We find that increased migration from rural villages leads to significant increases in consumption per capita, and that this effect is stronger for poorer households...

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...

This paper provides new evidence on educational disruptions caused by the Cultural Revolution and identifies the returns to schooling in urban China by exploiting individual-level variation in the effects of city-wide disruptions to education. The return to college is estimated at 49.8% using a...

This paper investigates the impact of land tenure insecurity on the migration decisions of China's rural residents. A simple model first frames the relationship among these variables and the probability that a reallocation of land will occur in the following year. After first demonstrating that...

In this paper, we investigate how reductions of barriers to migration affect the decision of middle school graduates to attend high school in rural China. Change in the cost of migration is identified using exogenous variation across counties in the timing of national identity card distribution,...

Recent research has shown that participation in migrant labor markets has led to substantial increases in income for families in rural China. This paper asks how participation is affected by elder parent health. We find that younger adults are less likely to work as migrants when a parent is...

We explore the relationship between the level of village inequality in 1986, and the subsequent growth of household incomes from 1986 to 1999. Using a detailed household-level data set from rural China, we find robust evidence that initial inequality is negatively related to subsequent household...