【主讲】Xuebo Wang (香港中文大学 经济学博士)
【主题】A Tale of Hardships: Gene, Family Education and Children’s Response to Negative Shocks
【时间】2018年1月19日 (周五) 10：00-11：30
【地点】上海财经大学经济学院楼701室
【语言】英文
【摘要】A large body of literature reveals that early negative shocks (e.g., diseases, malnutrition) have a long-term negative effect on children’s later achievements. Given that it could be difficult for children who face disadvantages in early life to efficiently build relevant life skills critical for their adult social success, such a conclusion is quite reasonable. However, this may not be the complete story. Another important fact has been completely ignored: human beings have the subjective initiative to deal with crisis, and children’s response to negative shocks may play a critical role in determining future outcomes. In this paper, we empirically identify children’s heterogeneous responses to negative shocks and further identify the causality between such responses and the later outcomes. We use survey data on twins in urban China to investigate the effect of “send-down” experience during China’s Cultural Revolution on children’s later social success. We find that children who are likely to respond to the hardships positively benefit greatly from the send-down experience, whereas children with a high tendency to respond to the sufferings negatively, or passively, are significantly harmed by the rustication experience. We further examine the determinants of children’s responses to negative shocks and find that both gene and family education play important roles in the formation of resilience in children’s future lives. In other words, some children are born optimistic, whereas some children could develop optimism through the support of their parents. Resilience is not only a nature but could also be nurtured to some extent, and it can only be nurtured by family education.
