Working Paper: NBER ID: w19153
Authors: Douglas Almond; Hongbin Li; Shuang Zhang
Abstract: Following the death of Mao in 1976, agrarian decision-making shifted from the collective to individual households, unleashing rapid growth in farm output and unprecedented reductions in poverty. In new data on reform timing in 914 counties, we find an immediate trend break in the fraction of male children following rural land reform. Among second births that followed a firstborn girl, sex ratios increased from 1.1 to 1.3 boys per girl in the four years following reform. Larger increases are found among families with more education and in counties with larger output gains due to reform. Proximately, increased sex selection was achieved in part through prenatal ultrasounds obtained in provincial capitals. The land reform estimate is robust to controlling for the county-level rollout of the One Child Policy. Overall, we estimate land reform accounted for roughly half of the increase in sex ratios in rural China from 1978-86, or about 1 million missing girls.
Keywords: land reform; sex selection; China; gender inequality; economic development
JEL Codes: I15; I25; I32; J13; K11; N35; P26; Q18
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Land reform (Q15) | Increased income and productivity benefits associated with having male children (J13) |
| Access to prenatal ultrasound technology (J13) | Increased sex selection practices (J13) |
| Land reform (Q15) | Increase in sex ratio at birth among second children (J19) |
| Land reform (Q15) | Increased fraction of males among second births following a firstborn girl (J19) |
| Land reform (Q15) | Increased sex selection behaviors (C92) |
| Higher educational levels and greater output gains (I26) | Increased effect of land reform on sex ratios (J79) |
| Land reform (Q15) | Missing girls in rural China (J13) |