Bucknell University林樹明助理教授暨第211期“華南經濟論壇”通知
題目：China’s Rural-Urban Migrant Households and Child Health
主講人：林樹明 Bucknell University 助理教授
時間：2017年5月18日(周四)下午三點
地點： 學院五樓會議室
內容摘要：This study uses migrant household survey data from 2008 and 2009 to examine how social disadvantage among rural-urban migrant households is associated with the nutritional status of children. The measures of social disadvantage are based on China’s hukou system of household registration – designed to limit domestic migration flows by denying public services in cities to migrants with rural registrations – and on gender bias that may harm women and girls. Results from fixed-effects regressions indicate that the hukou system has a negative association with children’s weight-for-age Z-scores, even after controlling for household characteristics. Tests for gender-based disadvantage indicate that children in female-headed households do not experience a nutritional penalty relative to children in households headed by men, while girls do exhibit poorer nutritional status compared to boys. Results from a standard Oaxaca decomposition, a detailed quantile decomposition based on recentered influence function (RIF) regressions, and a counterfactual distribution analysis all confirm that children who are left behind in rural villages – usually because of the oppressive hukou system – have poorer nutritional status than children who migrate with their parents, and the gaps are biggest at lower portions of the distribution.