"Get rid of the four olds": the long-lasting impact of the Chinese Cultural Revolution on Chinese society

Kerstin Schopohl

No 2016-24, CSAE Working Paper Series from Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford

Abstract: This paper studies the long-term impact of the Chinese Cultural Revolution on interpersonal trust, mental health and perceived equality. The Cultural Revolution was a social upheaval in China between 1966 and 1976 initiated by China’s leader Mao Zedong that resulted in a period of anarchy, violence and chaos as well as a large number of deaths, injuries and much persecution across China and was in particular targeted at intellectuals and the wealthy. The Cultural Revolution is likely to have had a long-lasting impact on social capital and preferences as well as on mental well-being. Using data from the Chinese General Social Survey as well as county level data on the number of abnormal deaths and victims of political persecution between 1966 and 1971 from Walder and Su (2003), I use a difference-in-difference strategy comparing individuals born before the Cultural Revolution with those born thereafter as well as across different counties to estimate the impact of Cultural Revolution intensity measured by victims and abnormal deaths on interpersonal trust, depression and perceived equality. To control for potential endogeneity due to unobservables as well as for measurement error, I instrument Cultural Revolution Intensity with the number of universities in a county at the time of the Cultural Revolution. I find that the Cultural Revolution is associated with lower levels of interpersonal trust, perceived equality and depression for more educated individuals born before the Cultural Revolution. These results are largely robust to a battery of tests. This shows that violence and conflict can have long-lasting effects on societies and that the consequences of the Cultural Revolution persist in China up to today.

Keywords: Cultural Revolution; China; Trust; Mental Health; Persistence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N35 N45 P26 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-his, nep-soc and nep-sog
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:csa:wpaper:2016-24

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