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DOES FAMINE HAVE A LONG-TERM EFFECT ON COHORT MORTALITY? EVIDENCE FROM THE 1959–1961 GREAT LEAP FORWARD FAMINE IN CHINA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2009

SHIGE SONG
SHIGE SONG
Affiliation:
Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China
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Summary

Using retrospective individual mortality records of three cohorts of newborns (1954–1958, 1959–1962 and 1963–1967) from a large national fertility survey conducted in 1988 in China, this paper examines the effect of being conceived or born during the 1959–1961 Great Leap Forward Famine on postnatal mortality. The results show strong evidence of a short-term (period) effect of the famine, caused directly by starvation or severe malnutrition during the period of the famine. After controlling for period mortality fluctuation, however, the famine-born cohort does not show higher mortality than either the pre-famine or the post-famine cohort. Aggregate-level cross-temporal comparisons using published cohort population counts from China's 1982 Census, 1990 Census, 1995 micro-Census, 2000 Census and 2005 micro-Census lead to the same conclusion. The relevance of these new findings for the ‘fetal origins’ hypothesis and the selection effect hypothesis is discussed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Biosocial Science , Volume 41 , Issue 4 , July 2009 , pp. 469 - 491
Copyright
Copyright © © Cambridge University Press 2009

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