Date and Time
September 30, 2009
1:30 PM - 3:00 PM

Availability
Open to the public
No RSVP required

Speaker
Karen Eggleston - Stanford University

Official growth in Chinese life expectancy between 1950 and 1980 -- the Mao era -- ranks among the most rapid in documented global history, yet virtually no study has quantitatively assessed the determinants of those longevity gains. In this research, Eggleston, Grant Miller (Stanford) and Qiong Zhang (Tsinghua) use previously unavailable provincial panel data, including newly coded data from public health archives, to explore a variety of proposed explanations such as economic development, barefoot doctors, public health programs, and education. Preliminary results suggest a small but meaningful impact of barefoot doctors; a modest public health campaign impact; and large education effects - including lagged effects of secondary and higher education enrollment - which seem robust across different controls and splitting of time periods. Addressing the obvious question of causation, the authors find no evidence of targeting in schooling or in barefoot doctors, but some targeting in public health campaigns. The analyses cut against the conventional view that barefoot doctors were the key to the Mao-era mortality decline, and reveal new evidence about the role of education and the SES gradient in health.