The Institutional Causes of China’s Great Famine, 1959-1961∗
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چکیده
This paper studies the causes of the largest famine in history, where approximately 30 million individuals died in rural China. We are motivated by the observation that average rural food retention during the famine seems too high to generate a famine without rural inequality in food availability. We document two novel facts. First, there is significant variance in famine mortality rates across rural regions. Second, these rural mortality rates are positively correlated with per capita food production, a surprising pattern that is unique to the famine years. This suggests that government redistributive policy contributed to the spatial variation in famine. To explain these results, we document that the historical grain procurement policy was inflexible – i.e., Chinese central planners had difficulty aggregating and responding to new information. We then argue that the inflexibility of the grain procurement policy together with the drop in production in 1959 can explain the observed variation in famine severity across rural areas.
منابع مشابه
The Institutional Causes of China ’ s Great Famine , 1959 – 1961 XIN MENG
This article studies the causes of China’s Great Famine, during which 16.5 to 45 million individuals perished in rural areas. We document that average rural food retention during the famine was too high to generate a severe famine without rural inequality in food availability; that there was significant variance in famine mortality rates across rural regions; and that rural mortality rates were...
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This paper studies the causes of China’s Great Famine, during which 16.5 to 45 million individuals perished in rural areas. We document that average rural food retention during the famine was too high to generate a severe famine without rural inequality in food availability; that there was significant variance in famine mortality rates across rural regions; and that rural mortality rates were p...
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متن کاملThe Institutional Causes of China’s Great Famine∗
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متن کاملThe Demography of China’s 1958-61 Great Famine: A Closer Examination
One of the largest famines in human history took place in China half a century ago. This disaster, lasting from 1958 to 1961 in many areas, resulted in a huge number of excess deaths. While the causes, magnitude and profound impacts of this catastrophe have been unfolded gradually in recent decades, many issues about the famine remain to be adequately examined. This paper aims to fill some gaps...
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تاریخ انتشار 2009