The Long-term Health Effects of Mass Political Violence: Evidence From China’s Cultural Revolution

There is much interest in the causes of several adverse health outcomes in middle and old age. In searching for new explanations for adverse health outcomes later in life, researchers have started to look beyond behavioural risk factors to examine the effect of shocks to health in utero and in childhood on health in old age. In this paper we extend this literature to examine the long-term health effects of mass political violence experienced in utero and in childhood using China’s Cultural Revolution as a natural experiment. We find that individuals who were in utero in the Cultural Revolution have reduced lung capacity later in life, but we find no evidence that being in utero has adverse effects on other health indicators later in life. We find more evidence that being an adolescent in the Cultural Revolution has an adverse effect on health later in life. Specifically, we find that individuals who were adolescents in the Cultural Revolution have higher blood pressure and reduced ability to engage in activities of daily living later in life. We also find that males who were adolescents in the Cultural Revolution have reduced cognitive skills later in life, while females who were adolescents in the Cultural Revolution have reduced lung capacity in middle and old age. specific recommendations for the Canadian context.Health, Idiosyncratic Shocks, Cultural Revolution, Long-term effects

Impact of Interupted Education on Earnings: The Educational Cost of the Chinese Cultural revolution

Impact of school interruptions on earnings through lower subsequent educational attainment and lower quality of education is investigated using the Chinese Cultural Revolution as a natural experiment. During the Cultural Revolution, most schools in China stopped normal operation for 3 to 4 years, universities stopped normal student recruitment for an even longer period. Such large scale school interruptions reduced the opportunity of the cohort to obtain university degrees. We find that individuals who did not obtain a university degree becasue of the Cultural revolution on average lost 46 per cent of their potential earnings. In addition most of the cohort experienced missed or interrupted schooling, at a given level of education and we show that this reduced earnings of degree holders of the Cultural Revolution cohort by 7.3 per cent on average. The findings in this paper also indicate that the quality of schooling affected earnings of individuals in a non-linear way, that is, only missed schooling at junior and senior high level reduced subsequent earnings and it only reduced earnings of those with degrees.

The Cultural Revolution, Stress and Cancer

The link between mental stress and cancer is still a belief, not a well established scientific fact. Scientists have relied largely on opinions of cancer stricken patients to establish a link between stress and cancer. Such opinion surveys tend to produce contradictory statistical inferences. Although it is difficult to conduct scientific experiments on humans similar to those on animals, human history is replete with “experiments” that have caused enormous stress on some human populations. The objective of this exercise is to draw evidence from one such massive experiment, the Cultural Revolution in China. Cancer data from Shanghai analyzed through an age-period-cohort technique show very strong evidence in support of the hypothesis that mental stress causes cancer.

Albania's "cultural revolution"

"September 1968.""1748"--handwritten on coverIncludes bibliographical reference

The Cultural Revolution

The Chinese Communist system was from its very inception based on an inherent contradiction and tension, and the Cultural Revolution is the latest and most violent manifestation of that contradiction. Built into the very structure of the system was an inner conflict between the desiderata, the imperatives, and the requirements that technocratic modernization on the one hand and Maoist values and strategy on the other. The Cultural Revolution collects four papers prepared for a research conference on the topic convened by the University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies in March 1968. Michel Oksenberg opens the volume by examining the impact of the Cultural Revolution on occupational groups including peasants, industrial managers and workers, intellectuals, students, party and government officials, and the military. Carl Riskin is concerned with the economic effects of the revolution, taking up production trends in agriculture and industry, movements in foreign trade, and implications of Masoist economic policies for China’s economic growth. Robert A. Scalapino turns to China’s foreign policy behavior during this period, arguing that Chinese Communists in general, and Mao in particular, formed foreign policy with a curious combination of cosmic, utopian internationalism and practical ethnocentrism rooted both in Chinese tradition and Communist experience. Ezra F. Vogel closes the volume by exploring the structure of the conflict, the struggles between factions, and the character of those factions