Stunting and selection effects of famine: A case study of the Great Chinese Famine

Tue Gørgens, Xin Meng () and Rhema Vaithianathan

Journal of Development Economics, 2012, vol. 97, issue 1, 99-111

Abstract: Many developing countries experience famine. If survival is related to height, the increasingly common practice of using height as a measure of well-being may be misleading. We devise a novel method for disentangling the stunting from the selection effects of famine. Using data from the 1959–1961 Great Chinese Famine, we find that taller children were more likely to survive the famine. Controlling for selection, we estimate that children under the age of five who survived the famine grew up to be 1 to 2cm shorter. Our results suggest that if a country experiences a shock such as famine, average height is potentially a biased measure of economic conditions during childhood.

Keywords: Famine; Height; China; Panel data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C33 I12 N95 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (84)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387811000034
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Stunting and Selection Effects of Famine: A Case Study of the Great Chinese Famine (2010)
Working Paper: Stunting and Selection Effects of Famine: A Case Study of the Great Chinese Famine (2010)
Working Paper: Stunting and Selection Effects of Famine: A Case Study of the Great Chinese Famine (2007)
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:eee:deveco:v:97:y:2012:i:1:p:99-111

DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2010.12.005

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Economics is currently edited by M. R. Rosenzweig

More articles in Journal of Development Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().