Childhood Poverty Duration and Its Long-Term Effects on Income and Education in China: A Survival Analysis Based on CHNS Data

Yuxiang Xie ()
Additional contact information
Yuxiang Xie: Shandong University of Finance and Economics

Child Indicators Research, 2023, vol. 16, issue 6, No 17, 2653-2677

Abstract: Abstract Childhood poverty is a widespread and persistent social issue that jeopardizes not only the survival and development of children, but also their future prospects. The timing of childhood poverty refers to the occurrence of poverty at different phases of a child’s life course, which has distinct effects on a child’s physical and mental health, cognitive ability, educational attainment and income level. This paper analyzes the longitudinal data of China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) to select sample consists of individuals born between 1989 and 1991, with childhood poverty duration of 22 years from 1989 to 2011, and tracks their complete growth cycle into young adulthood to synthesize the 1989–2011 panel data. The childhood poverty period is categorized into three stages, which are 0–4 years old, 5–10 years old, and 11–16 years old, according to the recurrent event data approach, based on which the impact of childhood poverty timing on income and educational achievement in adulthood is analyzed. Three main findings are emerged: (1) Experiencing poverty in childhood adversely affects one’s income and education levels in later life; (2) the negative effects of poverty are more pronounced when experienced in early childhood than in later childhood; (3) early poverty has a more detrimental impact on girls than on boys. The paper further explores the potential mechanisms by which malnutrition and early protein intake as a timing of childhood poverty affect income and educational attainment in adulthood. Mechanistic tests illustrate that malnutrition and lower early protein intake are associated with lower income and lower educational attainment in adulthood. In addition, this paper also examines how the impact of childhood poverty on adult income varies with different poverty thresholds and birth order controls. Results show that childhood poverty significantly reduces adult income irrespective of the choice of absolute or relative poverty measures and the inclusion of sibling effects.

Keywords: Childhood poverty; Intergenerational poverty; Long-term effects; Nutrition mechanisms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12187-023-10073-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:chinre:v:16:y:2023:i:6:d:10.1007_s12187-023-10073-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... f-life/journal/12187

DOI: 10.1007/s12187-023-10073-7

Access Statistics for this article

Child Indicators Research is currently edited by Asher Ben-Arieh

More articles in Child Indicators Research from Springer, The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().