Title：Clans and Calamity: How Social Organizations Saved Lives during China’s Great Famine

Speaker：Chuanchuan Zhang, Zhejiang University

Time：13:30 – 15:00 （Beijing Time, GMT+8）, 12 April, 2021

Mode：Online         

Zoom ID: 931 678 9264 

Password：790971

About the Speaker:

张川川， 浙江大学经济学院百人计划研究员、博士生导师，2013年博士毕业于北京大学中国经济研究中心，获经济学博士学位，曾任哈佛大学经济系访问研究员、世界银行总行研究顾问、中央财经大学副教授。近五年来在American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Demography, Journal of Population Economics, Health Economics等各领域顶级国际刊物和《中国社会科学》、《经济研究》、《经济学季刊》、《世界经济》、《金融研究》等国内权威刊物发表中英文论文40余篇；荣获霍英东高等院校青年教师基金奖，主持国家自然科学基金、北京市社科规划基金和国家社科基金重大项目子课题等多项国家和省部级课题；担任Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Health Economics,《经济研究》、《经济学季刊》、《世界经济》、《管理世界》等 50余本国内外学术刊物的匿名评审专家。

Abstract:

This paper examines the role of clan organizations, one of the most important social organizations in rural China, in disaster relief during China’s Great Famine of 1958-1961. We use the number of genealogies—books recording family trees—as a proxy for the strength of clans. Using a county-year panel from 1954 to 1966 and a difference-in-differences strategy that exploits the timing of the famine and the cross-sectional differences in the prefamine measures of clan strength, we find that the rise in the mortality rate during famine years is significantly less in counties with a higher clan density. A nationally representative household survey corroborates this finding. Investigation of potential mechanisms suggests that the clan’s impact on famine may have operated through enabling collective action against excessive government procurement. These results indicate that societal forces can reduce the damage of faulty government policies in times of crisis.