Author: Cameron Campbell

CGED-Q JSL 1760-1798 Draft Release

We have made available a draft release of the China Government Employee Dataset-Qing (CGED-Q) Jinshenlu (JSL) 1760-1798 data at the HKUST Dataspace:

https://dataspace.hkust.edu.hk/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.14711/dataset/E9GKRS

We expect to release a final version later in the year reflected corrections to any problems identified by users.

We are grateful to Xue Qing and Bijia Chen who spotted issues with the data before it was released.

Hao Dong publishes a new Chinese article in 社会学研究 on the effect of China’s cooling-off period policy on trends in divorce registration

Hao Dong has just published a single-authored paper in the top Chinese-language sociology journal 社会学研究 (Sociological Studies) titled 此情或可待：“离婚冷静期”规定对离婚登记数量趋势的影响 (A Wait Perhaps Worthwhile：The Influence of a “Cooling-off” Period on Trends in Divorce Registration)

Here is the Chinese abstract and English translation:

本文关注“离婚冷静期”规定对离婚登记数量趋势的影响，间接探讨了冲动等不可观测主观因素在我国离婚决策中的角色。基于民政部2018—2021年省—季度统计数据，辅以国家统计局、裁判文书网、百度指数等数据，本研究通过事件研究和双重差分等政策评估方法交叉验证发现，“冷静期”使得各省各季度离婚登记数量平均减少1.03~1.32万对，较前三年降低了33%~42%。在以往复婚较普遍、青年离婚占比较大、对“冷静期”等离婚相关信息搜索较多的地区降幅更大，揭示了部分潜在作用机制。

This study examines the influence of a 30-day “cooling-off” period policy on trends in divorce registration,shedding light on the intervention on certain unmeasurable subjective factors-including impulsiveness-in divorce decisionmaking in China. The analysis employs province-quarter-level data of divorce registration from the Ministry of Civil Affairs in 2018-2021 and further incorporates data from the National Bureau of Statistics,China Judgements Online,and the Baidu Index. Based on the policy evaluation methods,such as the event-study and difference-in-differences,evidence consistently suggests a substantial influence of the policy,which reduces 10.3-13.2 thousand divorces per province per quarter on average,amounting to a decline of 33-42% compared to the previous three years. Moreover,the influence appears to be greater in provinces with more previously divorced couples restoring their marriages,more divorces between young couples,or more internet searches about the policy and divorce-related information,highlighting some potential mechanisms underlying the intervention.

Congratulations Hao Dong!

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Hao Dong publishes a new article in Demography on post-1900 trends in educational assortative marriage in China

Hao Dong and his collaborator Yu Xie have published a paper in Demography titled “Trends in Educational Assortative Marriage in China Over the Past Century.”

Here is the abstract:

In the past century, China has undergone rapid and dramatic social and economic changes. This article describes trends in educational assortative marriages of cohorts born in 1906–1995 in China. We measure educational attainment relatively as an individual’s percentile position in the education distribution of a 10-year birth cohort and study trends using comparable, easy-to-interpret couple rank-rank correlations. We analyze microdata samples from the 1982, 1990, 2000, and 2010 China censuses and the 2015 1% intercensus survey and nationally representative surveys between 1996 and 2018. We find a large and steady increase in educational assortative marriage over the past century, except among those born in 1946–1965, whose schooling and marriage were impacted by the Cultural Revolution. Our study highlights the critical roles of social, political, and economic contexts in shaping trends in educational assortative marriage.

Congratulations Hao Dong and Yu Xie!

Hao Dong publishes a new article in PNAS on social mobility trends in post-revolution China

Hao Dong, together with Yu Xie, Xiang Zhou, and Xi Song published a new article “Trends in social mobility in postrevolution China” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Hao is a co-corresponding author on this article. Xi Song is an alumnae of the Lee-Campbell Group and has previously co-authored with Cameron Campbell and James Lee.

Here is the abstract:

In this paper, we study long-term trends in social mobility in the People’s Republic of China since its inception in 1949, with two operationalizations: 1) intergenerational occupational mobility and 2) intergenerational educational mobility. We draw on an accumulation of administrative and survey data and provide comparable estimates of these measures for birth cohorts born after 1945. To help interpret the results, we compare trends in China to those in the United States for the same birth cohorts. We find an increase in intergenerational occupational mobility in China due to its rapid industrialization in recent decades. Net of industrialization, however, intergenerational occupational mobility has been declining for recent cohorts. Intergenerational educational mobility in China shows a similar declining trend. In addition, mobility patterns have differed greatly by gender, with women in earlier cohorts and from a rural origin particularly disadvantaged. We attribute the general decline in social mobility to market forces that have taken hold since China’s economic reform that began in 1978. In contrast, social mobility by both measures has been relatively stable in the United States. However, while social mobility in China has trended downward, it is still higher than that in the United States, except for women’s educational mobility.

Full reference:

Xie, Yu, Hao Dong, Xiang Zhou, and Xi Song. 2022. “Trends in social mobility in postrevolution China.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119, no. 7, e2117471119

Hao Dong publishes a new article in the History of the Family on adopted children’s survival differentials and gender differences in Tokugawa Japan

Hao Dong and our long-time collaborator and friend Satomi Kurosu have just published a paper in the History of the Family titled “Gendered survival differentials of adopted children in northeast Japan, 1716–1870”

Here is the abstract:

Adoption was an important strategy for early-modern Japanese families to function and continue. This study is the first to systematically examine whether survival chances differ between adopted and non-adopted children and how gender moderates the survival differentials in historical Japan. We take advantage of individual-level panel data drawn from local household registers in northeast villages and towns between 1716 and 1870 consisting of 71,677 annual observations of 10,587 children aged 1–14, of whom 384 were adopted. Our event-history analysis takes a rich set of household characteristics and local economic context into account. We also apply matching and within-family comparison approaches to account for the unequal sex and age distribution of records between adopted and non-adopted children and unobserved systematic differences between households. We find substantial survival differentials between adopted and non-adopted children, which further vary by sex. Compared with non-adopted children of the same gender, adopted boys enjoyed survival advantages, while adopted girls suffered from elevated mortality risks. Moreover, the gendered survival differentials of adopted children were particularly apparent among those aged 5–9 rather than at older ages. In line with the patriarchal norms, these findings imply potentially different familial expectations for boy and girl adoptions in shaping child survival differentials.

Congratulations Hao and Satomi!

 

University of Michigan Press publishes Matt Noellert’s New Book on Communist Land Reform using the CRRD-LR

 

https://www.press.umich.edu/images/covers/full/9780472132119.jpgMatt Noellert’s first book, Power over Property: The Political Economy of Communist Land Reform in China, was published in September 2020 by the University of Michigan Press and is now available for ordering online in various formats.

Power over Property is based on Matt’s PhD dissertation and uses the CRRD-LR dataset to demonstrate the primacy of political entitlements in shaping social and economic outcomes in twentieth-century China.

Matt Noellert begins new position as Associate Professor of Asian Economic History at Hitotsubashi University

Lee-Campbell Group member, Matthew Noellert, has taken up a new Associate Professor position at Hitotsubashi University in Kunitachi, Tokyo, Japan, beginning September 1, 2020. Hitotsubashi specializes in social sciences and is one of the best universities in Japan for economic research. Hitotsubashi is also famous for being one of the top four most selective universities in Japan (based on entrance exam score).

Matt is honored to join Hitotsubashi’s prestigious Faculty of Economics. He looks forward to expanding his research on rural reconstruction to include comparisons between northeast China and other regions within China, as well as international comparisons with Japan and Korea.

Matt earned his PhD at HKUST in 2014, studying with James Lee and Cameron Campbell. He was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Shanxi University 2014-2016 working with Long XING and Yingze HU and an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Iowa from 2016-2020.

 

Matt Noellert awarded Luce/ACLS Program in China Studies Postdoctoral Fellowship

Matt Noellert was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the Henry Luce Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Program in China Studies for the 2017-18 academic year. This fellowship supports an  academic year released from teaching to engage in research and preparation of an academic monograph on China.

Here is the announcement of Matt’s award.

Matt will use this fellowship to complete his book manuscript, “Beyond Fanshen: New Perspectives on Communist Land Reform from Northeast China, 1946-1948.”