| dc.description.abstracteng | Since the implementation of the “reform and opening up” policy in 1978, China has been experiencing remarkable economic growth. This economic success can be partly attributed to technological progress, even though no consensus has been reached regarding how much economic growth can be explained by it (Hsieh and Klenow, 2009; Tian and Yu, 2012). Along with this impressive economic development, an increasing number of Chinese families are relieved from hunger and poverty. Accordingly, patterns of food consumption have also been changing dramatically. The traditional Chinese diet, which consists mainly of grain and vegetables with very little meat, is gradually being replaced by a modern western diet that is high in fat and sugar (Drewnowski and Popkin, 1997; Guo et al., 2000; Popkin, 2003; Du et al., 2004; Meng et al., 2009). Moreover, it has become a reflection of poverty rather than culinary tradition. These changes indicate that China is undergoing a nutrition transition (Monteiro et al., 1995; Popkin et al., 2001; Du et al., 2002; Popkin, 2001b, 2003; Wang et al., 2007; Gao et al., 2010). Rapid economic development not only changes the eating habit, but also leads to some changes in social value such as the attitude toward girls. Traditionally, Chinese people favor boys over girls and devote more resources to boys. However, successful economic reform and accompanied social and institutional changes alter the traditional culture of preference for sons and reduce the incentive to favor boys. Therefore, whether girls are still discriminated in China becomes ambiguous. Given the significance of the Chinese economy and population in the world, it is particularly important to investigate the driving force behind economic development and its impact on nutrition transition and gender inequality.
In this dissertation, I will offer a particular focus on three topics: the contribution share of technological progress to China’s economic growth, the impact of income growth on nutrition improvement and culinary structural change, and the identification of gender discrimination against girls after the successful economic development. Each topic is investigated in one case study.
The first case study presents a meta-analysis of total factor productivity growth (TFPG) in China, which is the most widely used indicator to measure technological progress. I collect 5308 observations from 150 primary studies to provide insight and explanations of the controversies regarding productivity growth in China in the current literature. The main findings include: (1) The mean TFPG of the aggregate economy at the national level in the current literature is only about 2.42% after 1978, which barely contributes to 24% economic growth; (2) There are three cycles for TFPG after 1978 and each cycle lasts about ten years; (3) TFPG after 1978 is generally greater than that before 1978 and contributes more to economic growth. Moreover, TFPG also varies in different regions and sectors, and is partly determined by the characteristics of the research such as language and peer-review process.
The second case study focuses on the relationship between income growth and nutrition transition. As aforementioned, China is undergoing a nutrition transition due to rapid income growth. Current literature on nutrition transition mainly focus on estimating the calorie elasticity with respect to income by parametric models. However, nutrition transition might be a nonlinear function of income. Its contents are not limited to calorie intake, but also include dietary change and nutrition improvements. In this thesis, I methodologically propose 10 different indices to measure nutrition transition from different perspectives, and then introduce a semiparametric model to capture the complicated relationship between nutrition transition and income growth with these indices, which can be further used to directly project the nutrition improvement and dietary change at different income levels from different aspects. I take China as an illustrative example and find that nutrition transition will slow down in the future and the concern about diet-related, non-communicable diseases (DR-NCD) such as obesity might be not as pessimistic as we expected before.
The third case study sheds light on gender inequality in the context of successful economic development. As we know, China has a long history of son preference. However, empirical studies yield controversial results, which might be attributed to the methodological flaws in the current methods used to test gender bias. Therefore, this case study compares two approaches inspired from the Engel’s method to directly measure and test gender bias by household expenditure data. Using both parametric and semiparametric estimates, I find that gender inequality still exists in China, particularly in rural China. However, no evidence supports that education could help reduce gender inequality in China.
A brief conclusion can be drawn from these three case studies. After 1978, TFP grows at 2.4% per year in China. Meanwhile, input factors such as labor and capital grow at an even faster rate. All of these have lead to an impressive rate of economic growth during the past three decades. Accordingly, household income has increased significantly and there has been a very substantial reduction of poverty. As people become richer, their dietary preferences shift from staple food to fruit, meat and dairy, which are usually more expensive and of higher value, and the calorie intake also increases. However, the consumption of high-value and high-calorie food does not increase monotonically with income, since rich people are more concerned about health than energy. Rapid economic growth and accompanied social and institutional changes also influenced the discrimination against girls in China. Our results find that gender inequality still exists in China. Particularly, rural girls are more likely to be discriminated than their urban counterparts.
Furthermore, general policy implications can be deduced from these findings. First, both technological progress and input accumulation are crucial to economic growth. In order to maintain sustainable economic success in China, particularly in the poor West and Central regions, policy should focus on eliminating the barriers that prevent technological spillover since the TFPGs in Western and Central regions are rather low compared to those in the East. Second, income growth leads to nutrition improvement and dietary change, but not monotonically. The dietary role of staple food will decrease, while that of fruit and dairy will increase. Third, discrimination against girls still exists in China, particularly for teenage girls who are supposed to get education, which might be attributable to slightly higher return to education for male. Therefore, the increasing economic and social status of women, as well as the population shortage of women reaching marriage age cannot fully offset the traditional son preference in China. | de |