Do Long-Run Disasters Promote Human Capital in China? —The Impact of 500 Years of Natural Disasters on County-Level Human-Capital Accumulation

Zhidi Zhang and Jianqing Ruan
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Zhidi Zhang: China Academy for Rural Development, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
Jianqing Ruan: China Academy for Rural Development, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 20, 1-14

Abstract: Is there a relationship between the frequency of regional natural disasters and long-term human-capital accumulation? This article investigates the long-run causality between natural calamities and human-capital accumulation with macro and micro data. Empirical cross-county analysis demonstrates that higher frequencies of natural calamities are correlated with higher rates of human-capital accumulation. Specifically, on the basis of empirical data of the fifth census in 2000 and China’s Labor-Force Dynamics Survey in 2012, this paper exploits the two databases to infer that the high disaster frequency in the years of 1500–2000 was likely to increase regional human-capital accumulation on district level. High natural-calamity frequency reduces the expected rate of returning to physical capital, which also serves to increase human-capital. Thus, experiencing with natural disasters would influence human’s preference to human-capital investment instead of physical capital.

Keywords: long-run disasters; human capital; quantified history; drought; flood (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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