Many children worldwide are left-behind by parents migrating for work — over 61 million in rural China alone, almost half of whom are left-behind by both parents. While previous literature considers impacts of one parent absent on educational inputs (e.g., study time, enrollment, schooling...

In this paper, we examine the economic implications of demographic age structure in the context of regional development in China. We extend the development accounting framework by incorporating age structure and apply it to a panel data set of 28 Chinese provinces. We find that changes in age...

Center for China Study, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China; Department of Economics, Geborg University, Sweden

Intergenerational disparity in income and health violates the norm of equal opportunity and deserves the attention of researchers and policy makers. To understand changes in intergenerational disparity, we created the intergenerational mobility index (IMI), which can simultaneously measure...

This paper analyzes changes in the gender earnings gap in urban China over the period 1988–2004 using urban household survey data. The mean female/male earnings ratio declined from 86.3% to 76.2%. Mainly responsible for this diverging trend were rapid increases in returns to both observed and...

China's economic reform has affected various ownership sectors to different degree. A comparison of gender wage differentials and discrimination among individuals employed in the three sectors - state sector, the collective sector, and the private sector - provides information on the impact of...

The impacts of pure sex preference and differential earnings opportunities by gender on investments in children are modelled with altruism. If bequest constraints do not bind human investments are privately efficient, with the higher-earning gender receiving more education. Education does not...

This paper develops an overlapping-generations model in which agents invest in health to prolong life in both working and retirement periods. It explores how unfunded social security with or without health subsidies affects life expectancy, economic growth, and welfare. In particular, by...