The Lasting Impact of Parental Early Life Malnutrition on Their Offspring: Evidence from the China Great Leap Forward Famine

We investigate whether the effects of parents’ in utero malnutrition extend to the second generation (their children). Specifically, we explore whether the second generation’s level of schooling is negatively impacted by their parents’ malnutrition in utero, using the China Famine as a natural exper...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:World development 2014-02, Vol.54, p.232-242
Main Authors: Kim, Seonghoon, Deng, Quheng, Fleisher, Belton M., Li, Shi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Barker hypothesis
Children & youth
China (People's Republic)
China Famine
Climate
Famine
Famines
Females
fetal origin
Impact analysis
Infants
Males
Malnutrition
Measurement
Mortality Rates
Nutrition
Parents
Peoples Republic of China
schooling
Studies
Women
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We investigate whether the effects of parents’ in utero malnutrition extend to the second generation (their children). Specifically, we explore whether the second generation’s level of schooling is negatively impacted by their parents’ malnutrition in utero, using the China Famine as a natural experiment. We find that, the impact of mother’s in utero malnutrition due to the Famine reduced second generation male and female entrance into junior secondary school by about 5–7 percentage points. We measure famine severity with provincial excess death rates instrumented by measures of adverse climate conditions, which corrects for possible biases induced by measurement errors and omitted variables. Our findings indicate the existence of an important second-generation multiplier of policies that support the nutrition of pregnant women and infants in any country where nutritional deficiencies remain today.
ISSN:0305-750X
1873-5991
DOI:10.1016/j.worlddev.2013.08.007