Youth smoking can biologically reduce learning productivity. It can also reduce youths’ expected returns to education and lower their motivation to go to school, where smoking is forbidden. Using rich household survey data from rural China, this study investigates the effect of youth smoking...

We examine the role of information in understanding the differential effects of income on the demand for health. In the health capital framework of Grossman (JPE, 1972), we derive the testable hypotheses that individuals adjust their diet in a healthier direction upon receiving negative health...

The objective of this paper is to examine whether noncognitive skills explain differences in employment status and hourly wages even after controlling for age, experience, schooling and cognitive skills. Of particular interest is to examine the relative magnitudes of the impacts of the cognitive...

The introduction of the household responsibility system in the early 1980s and market liberalizing reforms are generally credited with the rapid growth enjoyed by China's rural sector. This growth has not been without some cost however. Over the last two decades, inequality appears to have...

Since 1999, China has spent RMB 50 billion (about US$7 billion) to implement the "Grain for Green" programme, the largest land retirement programme in the developing world. From 1999 to 2003, over 7.2 million hectares of agricultural land were retired under the programme. However, many farmers...