Abstract
We use newly collected individual-level hunger recall information from the China Family Panel Survey to estimate the causal effect of undernourishment on later-life health. We develop a two-sample instrumental variable (TSIV) estimator that can deal with heterogeneous samples. We find a nonlinear relationship between mortality rates, a commonly used famine indicator, and the individual hunger experience. The nonlinearity in famine exposure may explain the variation in the famine's effect on later-life health found in previous studies. We also find that exposure to hunger early in life leads to worse health among females 50 years later. This effect is much larger than the reduced-form effect found in previous studies. For males, we find no impact.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 771-787 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | Journal of Applied Econometrics |
| Volume | 37 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| Early online date | 15 Mar 2022 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jul 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant 733206 LifeCycle). We gratefully acknowledge the valuable comments from the coeditor Thierry Magnac and three anonymous reviewers.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Authors. Journal of Applied Econometrics published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Funding
This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant 733206 LifeCycle). We gratefully acknowledge the valuable comments from the coeditor Thierry Magnac and three anonymous reviewers.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Horizon 2020 | 733206 |
| Horizon 2020 |
Keywords
- developmental origins
- famine
- hunger
- two-sample instrumental variable
