Bucknell University林树明助理教授暨第211期“华南经济论坛”通知
题目:China’s Rural-Urban Migrant Households and Child Health
主讲人:林树明 Bucknell University 助理教授
时间:2017年5月18日(周四)下午三点
地点: 学院五楼会议室
内容摘要:This study uses migrant household survey data from 2008 and 2009 to examine how social disadvantage among rural-urban migrant households is associated with the nutritional status of children. The measures of social disadvantage are based on China’s hukou system of household registration – designed to limit domestic migration flows by denying public services in cities to migrants with rural registrations – and on gender bias that may harm women and girls. Results from fixed-effects regressions indicate that the hukou system has a negative association with children’s weight-for-age Z-scores, even after controlling for household characteristics. Tests for gender-based disadvantage indicate that children in female-headed households do not experience a nutritional penalty relative to children in households headed by men, while girls do exhibit poorer nutritional status compared to boys. Results from a standard Oaxaca decomposition, a detailed quantile decomposition based on recentered influence function (RIF) regressions, and a counterfactual distribution analysis all confirm that children who are left behind in rural villages – usually because of the oppressive hukou system – have poorer nutritional status than children who migrate with their parents, and the gaps are biggest at lower portions of the distribution.