CMGPD-LNSubstantive Lecture

Day 1Course Organization

Self-introductionsDebates and Controversies, Topics

Course OrganizationSubstantive Lecture

• Brief introduction to specific topics• Relevant results from analysis of CMGPD-LN– Will assume that you have done required reading

before lecture• Outstanding issues and debates• Possible applications of the CMGPD-LN• Questions and discussion welcome

Course OrganizationSubstantive Lecture - Topics

• Longitudinal data analysis

• Population composition

• Household and family• Social mobility• Marriage and

reproduction

• Health and mortality• Early-life conditions• Family contextual

influences• Kin groups• Village context• Migration

Course OrganizationMethodological Lecture

• Using the CMGPD-LN for specific analyses• Linked to substantive lectures• Related variables– Origins– Limitations

• Operations in STATA• Interpretation• Questions and discussion welcome

Course OrganizationDiscussion Section

• Examples of operations from the methodological lecture

• Previous day’s practice exercise• Progress on analysis for final report• Remaining questions from morning’s lectures

Course OrganizationExercises

• Daily• Introduce variables• Practice with key operations• Discuss the following day in section• Open-ended to encourage diversity in

approaches, and discussion

Course OrganizationFinal Report

• To be presented orally on the 8/7– Presentation may be in Chinese– Handouts or Powerpoint

• Present initial ideas for topic on 7/26• Collaboration is welcome• Goal: develop a topic to pursue independently after the end of

class• Demonstrate

– Familiarity with the data– Suitability of data for the topic at hand– Ability to carry out relevant operations in STATA– Relevance to an interesting research topic or question

Course organizationFormat

• Questions and discussion are welcome• Chinese and English are both fine• Whenever possible, I will use Chinese• Available for appointments 3pm-5pm• Please turn off cell phones• During class, please use your laptops only for

following lecture, or taking notes

Debates and ControversiesEconomy and population (Malthus)

• Deliberate fertility limitation– Did it exist?– Did it respond to economic conditions?

• Did community or family context modulate the response?– Implications for Malthusian accounts– 人类的四分之一

• Involuntary fertility responses• Mortality responses

– 压力下的生活• Outstanding question: do individual-level responses observed

so far aggregate up to a meaningful population-level response?

Debates and ControversiesFamily and household

• Kin networks and individual outcomes– Where is the boundary?

• Household? More distant kin?– What is the process?

• Collective decision-making? • Resource allocation?• Role assignment?

• Kin networks as insurance– Protection against various kinds of shocks?

• Comparison with the West– Lifeboat/corporate Eastern family versus ‘nuclear hardship’ of

the West

Debates and ControversiesStratification and Inequality

• Was China ‘open’ or ‘closed’?– Turnover in the composition of elites, or rigidity?– Ho (1962) versus Hymes (1984)

• What role did kin other than parents play?– Do weak parent-child correlations in Ho (1962),

Lee and Campbell (1997) etc. understate rigidity?• Campbell and Lee (2003, 2008)

• Kin groups as units of stratification– Long-term persistence in the status of kin groups?

Topics• Differentials in demographic behavior

– Community, household context, socioeconomic status• Influence of conditions in early- and mid-life on outcomes later in life

– Health and mortality– Socioeconomic attainment– Strong interest in aging literature

• Intergenerational associations in demographic behavior– Heritability of reproduction, mortality?

• Migration• Micro-/Macro-level interactions

– How do micro-level differences in behavior aggregate up to changes in population composition?

Genealogy and Inequality:Ancestry and Kinship in Demography and Stratification

1. How did kin groups contribute to inequality by shaping individual economic, social, and demographic outcomes in the past?

2. Kin groups and inequality over the long term3. Inequality, demography, and population change

Overall goal: use the Chinese experience to critique models of stratification based on Western experience, and develop new ones more relevant for the rest of the world.

Genealogy and InequalityIndividual Outcomes

• Studies of determinants of economic, social, and demographic outcomes focus on the macro or the micro– Macro: Country, region, social class, race,

ethnicity, gender– Micro: Parental and individual characteristics

• Recently, some consideration of neighborhood or community

• Neglect intermediate layers such as kin groups

Genealogy and InequalityIndividual Outcomes

• This approach reflects the influence of Western traditions

• Focus on broad categories originally of interest in the Western context such as race, gender, ethnicity, social class

• Emphasis on the role of the nuclear family• For China, and the rest of the world, other units of

organization are relevant• Opportunity to use the Chinese case to develop new

models for study of global phenomenon

Genealogy and InequalityIndividual Outcomes

Individual outcomesEducationOccupation/IncomeMarriage and ReproductionHealth and Mortality

Macro-level contextEthnicity/race/genderContinent/country/region

Micro-level contextParental characteristicsIndividual characteristics

Meso-level contextCommunity/neighborhoodKin group

Community

Descent Group

Household Group

Household

Household

Household GroupHousehold

Household

Household

Descent Group

Household Group

Household Group

Household Group

Household

Household

Household

Household

Household

Household

Household

Household

Household

Genealogy and InequalityIndividual Outcomes

• Goals– Measure the influence of characteristics of near and

distant kin on individual demographic, social, and economic outcomes

– Assess the relative importance of households, villages and descent groups in shaping outcomes

• Methods– Quantitative methods– 18th and 19th century household register data (CMGPD-LN)

Genealogy and InequalityKin groups over the long term

• Are some kin groups persistently more successful over the very long term?– Lineages, descent groups, etc.

• Western models of inter-generational stratification focus on parents and children– Markovian: grandparents and other kin don’t have

independent effects– Precludes possibility of multi-generation persistence of

kin group status– No role for lineages, descent groups, etc.

Genealogy and InequalityKin groups over the long term

Genealogy and InequalityKin groups over the long term

• Goals– Assess whether the relative status of kin groups persists

over long periods of time– Net of parent-child transmission processes

• Methods– Quantitative methods– 18th and 19th century household register data (CMGPD-LN)– 20th century retrospective survey data– Correlate statuses of lineages in 18th and 19th centuries

with their status in the 19th century

Inequality, demography, and population change

• Does the intergenerational transmission of status interact with demographic differentials to change population composition over the long term?

• In other words, do the descendants of a selective subset of the population account for a disproportionate share of the population in later generations?

• A possible mechanism for social and economic change

Inequality, demography, and population change

• If…– High-status males reproduce more– Traits, behaviors, attitudes conducive to

attainment are transmitted from parent to child• Then…– Intergenerational transmission of traits, combined

with fertility differentials, may have been a mechanism for population change

– Whether transmission is by genes or environment doesn’t matter

Inequality, demography, and population change

• Gregory Clark (2007) included evidence from a multi-generational approach– Indirect evidence from changes in the frequency

of rare surnames• Reproductive success of founders measured

generations later• Net of whatever processes are neglected in

simulation/projection studies

Inequality, demography, and population change

• Clark (2007) suggested that differentials in reproduction and transmission of traits diffused skills and attitudes compatible with a market economy.

• Suggested that such processes were unique to England, and helped account for the Industrial Revolution

• We argue that such processes were also evident in preindustrial China

Inequality, demography, and population change

• Inequality– Differences in outcomes between kin groups in

random-effects models• Demography– Male reproductive success over the long-term, by

SES• Assumption: micro-level results on male

reproductive success ‘scale up’

Inequality, demography, and population change

• Differentials in demographic behavior are well-documented– Marriage, fertility, mortality– Historical and contemporary– Europe, North America, Asia

• Implications for population composition depend on...– Net effects of demographic differentials– Processes of intergenerational transmission

• Patterns of differentials and processes of transmission need to be considered jointly

Inequality, demography, and population change

• Early studies inferred ‘dysgenic’ trends in population from fertility differentials

• Fertility is just part of the equation• Other pieces of the process…– Marriage, Mortality– Status transmission

• Micro-level feedbacks, interactions, correlations between demographic behaviors and status transmission

Inequality, demography, and population change

• Mostly use some form of simulation/projection– Preston and Campbell (1993)– Robert Mare and collaborators– David Lam

• Extrapolate from fertility/mortality and integenerational transmission to population change

• Strong assumptions about independence of demographic outcomes• Markovian

– Based on two-generation parent-child data– No ‘memory’

• Ignore larger units of organization community or lineage that may have generated correlations