Technology, enrollment gender gap and the impact of social norms in rural China

Author(s):  
Hejun Gu ◽  
Ugur Aytun Ozturk

Purpose Investigating the relationship between gender gap in school enrollment and the spread of information and communication technology (ICT) in rural China. Design/methodology/approach Using data from China Health and Nutrition Survey for the period of 1991-2009, we document gender patterns of school enrollments of children aged between 7 and 18 years. We estimate the impact of phone and internet access on school enrollments of children using a probit model. Findings The results indicate that the spread of phone and internet access both contribute to an increase in enrollment of females. Naturally, the gender gap in enrollments is not simply shaped by technology, and social norms also play an important role. Consequently, our results also show that enrollment of females is lower in the communities where pro-son preference is stronger, holding technology and other factors constant. Originality/value We conclude that promoting further development of telecommunications services may result in narrowing the school enrollment gender gap in rural China. This conclusion is valuable in setting governmental policies as well as guiding the actions of NGOs.

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 1037-1080 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Xuefei Wang

Abstract About 60 million children under the age of 18 are left behind by their parents in rural China. This paper studies the effect of migrant parents on the educational attainment of their left-behind children in rural China. A theoretical model of optimal schooling in the context of parental migration is proposed. Then, reduced-form equations are estimated using probit model, instrumental variables probit model, and linear instrumental variables model. Results show that parental migration has a negative effect on children’s school enrollment. This negative effect is significant and sizable on the school enrollment of boys, but insignificant on the school enrollment of girls. The most important source of this robust negative effect on boys is the absence of fathers. Results suggest that left-behind mothers or relatives cannot fulfill fathers’ role successfully in disciplining boys and help with their educational needs.


Author(s):  
Ping Xue ◽  
Xinru Han ◽  
Ehsan Elahi ◽  
Yinyu Zhao

China has been experienced a nutrition transition and has developed the largest population of internet users. We evaluate the impacts of internet access on the nutritional intake of Chinese rural residents. An IV-Probit based propensity score matching method is used to determine the impact of internet access on nutritional intake. The data were collected from 10042 rural households existed in six provinces of China. The results reveal that the rural residents with internet access have significantly higher intakes of energy, protein, and fat than those without their counterparts. Chinese rural residents with Internet access significantly increase the intakes of energy, protein, and fat by 1.35 percent (28.62 kcal), 5.02 percent (2.61 g), and 4.33 percent (3.30 g), respectively. There is heterogeneity in the intakes of energy, protein, and fat among those in different income groups. Moreover, non-staple food consumption is the main channel through which internet access affects nutritional intake. The results stress to local population to use internet for the improvement of nutritional status.


2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhenhua Wang ◽  
Jinqi Jiang ◽  
Qiyan Zeng

Abstract Background Insufficient nutrition intake has negatively influenced the health of the elderly in rural China where the problem of population aging is serious. The present study aims to explore whether the medical system, called the New Rural Cooperative Medical System (NRCMS), can improve the rural elderly’s nutrition intake and the mechanism behind it. Methods The difference in differences (DID) model and the propensity score matching-difference in differences (PSM-DID) model are both performed to investigate the impact of the medical system on nutrition improvement for the rural elderly. Two thousand seven hundred eighty rural elderly samples tracked in 2000 and 2006 from the China Health and Nutrition Survey are analyzed. Indices for the elderly’s nutrition intake includes daily average intake of energy, fat, protein, and carbohydrate. Results The results show that participation in the NRCMS can significantly increase the rural elderly’s total energy intake, carbohydrate intake, and protein intake by 206.688 kcal, 36.379 g, and 6.979 g, respectively. A more significant impact of the NRCMS on nutrition intake is observed in the central and near-western where economic development is lagging behind. Also, compared to people of 18–60 age group, such impact is statistically more significant in the elderly for the carbohydrate intake. Conclusions The NRCMS can improve the rural elderly’s nutrition intake in China. As the population ages rapidly in rural China, the present study provides recommendations on how to improve nutrition and health status of the elderly from the aspect of the medical system.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 683-694
Author(s):  
Jun Wang ◽  
Yong Hu

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate how trade liberalization influences rural poverty reduction in China.Design/methodology/approachThe authors make use of China Family Panel Studies survey data, take annual income of farmers of RMB2,300 and RMB3,450 as the poverty lines (poverty line 1 and poverty line 2, respectively). Residents below poverty line 1 and poverty line 2 are 2,580 and 2,661, respectively. Probit model is used to estimate the impact of trade liberalization on the poverty probability. Income-deciding equation is used to estimate the impact of trade liberalization on the income level of poor residents in rural areas. Income-deciding equation is also used to examine the transmission mechanism of trade liberalization affecting rural poverty.FindingsThis study finds that trade liberalization can reduce the poverty probability of rural residents and promote the income growth of poor residents in rural areas. Trade liberalization increases the income of poor residents and reduces poverty through transmission mechanisms such as promoting economic growth and financial expenditure.Originality/valueTo the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study to quantitatively model the impact of trade liberalization on rural poverty reduction in China using residents’ survey data.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 415-437
Author(s):  
Henry Orach ◽  
Chen Pu ◽  
Shen Qianling ◽  
Wei Shiying ◽  
Hassan Ssewajje ◽  
...  

Health is an important tool to farmers. However, percentage of farmers are unable to obtain good health due to inadequate capital and inadequate access to credit from financial institutions. Using China’s rural household income survey (CHIP) database conducted in 2014, this study contributes to the literatures by analyzing the effect of credit rationing on rural farmers’ health status. Ordered probit model was used to evaluate the impact of credit rationing on farmers’ health status. Credit rationing was found to play the negative role of hindering rural farmers from accessing good health status. This study definitely answers the question regarding the negative effect of credit rationing on the health status of rural household farmers. Further study to establish causal relationships using time-variants/panel datasets.


2022 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eman Elish

Purpose The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of the gender gap on the ecological footprint (EFP) corresponding to its different quantiles. Design/methodology/approach Quantile panel regression for 24 countries from the period 2006 to 2017 will be used, for the gender gap and other determinants of EFP. Findings Each factor affecting EFP differs in its impact depending on the level of EFP quantile it corresponds to. Gender gap was found to be increasing EFP for the higher quantiles and decreasing EFP for the lower quantiles. Research limitations/implications Environmental institutions should be considering the role of gender equality as a factor affecting the environment. Socioeconomic factors sometimes hamper the role of the female gender in preserving the environment. There are variations on how EFP factors differ between individual countries and this opens areas for further studies. Originality/value This research contributes to the current research studies by testing the impact of the gender gap on EFP instead of CO2 emission which is widely used in the literature. This topic is considered understudied and one of the few that uses the quantile panel regression to investigate this impact, none of which is used in gender and environment studies. Finally, the model used in the study uses a more comprehensive extension of the “Stochastic Impact by Regression on Pollution, Affluence and Technology” model compared to the existing empirical studies in this area.


2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-187
Author(s):  
Imane Ezzaouia ◽  
Jacques Bulchand-Gidumal

Purpose – This study measures the relative importance of hotel website features based on users’ perceptions and analyses the impact of gender, age, and frequency of Internet access on the given importance of features. Our study includes ten features and three hypotheses. Design/methodology/approach – A research questionnaire was developed and distributed to hotel guests. A total of 406 responses were collected. Statistical analysis included paired t-tests and oneway ANOVA. Findings – Results showed that users prioritized information about products and services, bookings and reservations, an easy-to-use website, and contact information. Privacy, design, and information on the surroundings were also important features. Customer feedback options, corporate information, and links to social media sites were ranked as significantly less important. Moreover, age and frequency of Internet access have a significant impact on the perceived importance of features, while no differences were found with regard to gender. Originality – Many studies have used web performance tools to measure the performance of hotel websites. However, these studies have not provided guests’ preferences and perceived importance of website features. To our knowledge, no previous research has examined the effect of gender, age, and frequency of Internet access on the perceived importance of hotel website features.


Author(s):  
Yuxin Wang ◽  
Wenlong Li ◽  
Jinping Xiong ◽  
Ying Li ◽  
Huaqing Wu

With rapid urbanization and industry development, China has witnessed substantial land acquisition. Using the rural household survey data, this paper examines the impact of land expropriation on land-lost farmers’ self-reported health with the ordered probit model and investigates the possible mechanisms. The results show that the land expropriation puts higher health risks over those land-lost farmers and the health status of land-lost farmers is significantly worse than that of those with land. Land expropriation has a negative impact on the land-lost farmer’s health through income effects and psychological effects. The health status of land-lost farmers can be enhanced through amending current land requisition policies, increasing the amount of compensation, improving the earning capacity of land-lost farmers and strengthening mental health education.


Nutrients ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 2015
Author(s):  
Ping Xue ◽  
Xinru Han ◽  
Ehsan Elahi ◽  
Yinyu Zhao ◽  
Xiudong Wang

Over the past 4 decades, China has experienced a nutritional transition and has developed the largest population of internet users. In this study, we evaluated the impacts of internet access on the nutritional intake in Chinese rural residents. An IV-Probit-based propensity score matching method was used to determine the impact of internet access on nutritional intake. The data were collected from 10,042 rural households in six Chinese provinces. The results reveal that rural residents with internet access have significantly higher energy, protein, and fat intake than those without. Chinese rural residents with internet access consumed 1.35% (28.62 kcal), 5.02% (2.61 g), and 4.33% (3.30 g) more energy, protein, and fat, respectively. There was heterogeneity in regard to the intake of energy, protein, and fat among those in different income groups. Moreover, non-staple food consumption is the main channel through which internet access affects nutritional intake. The results demonstrate that the local population uses the internet to improve their nutritional status. Further studies are required to investigate the impact of internet use on food consumed away from home and micronutrient intake.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karthik Muralidharan ◽  
Nishith Prakash

We study the impact of an innovative program in the Indian state of Bihar that aimed to reduce the gender gap in secondary school enrollment by providing girls who continued to secondary school with a bicycle that would improve access to school. Using data from a large representative household survey, we employ a triple difference approach (using boys and the neighboring state of Jharkhand as comparison groups) and find that being in a cohort that was exposed to the Cycle program increased girls' age-appropriate enrollment in secondary school by 32 percent and reduced the corresponding gender gap by 40 percent. We also find an 18 percent increase in the number of girls who appear for the high-stakes secondary school certificate exam, and a 12 percent increase in the number of girls who pass it. Parametric and non-parametric decompositions of the triple-difference estimate as a function of distance to the nearest secondary school show that the increases in enrollment mostly took place in villages that were further away from a secondary school, suggesting that the mechanism of impact was the reduction in the time and safety cost of school attendance made possible by the bicycle. We also find that the Cycle program was much more cost effective at increasing girls' secondary school enrollment than comparable conditional cash transfer programs in South Asia. (JEL H42, I21, I28, J16, O15, O18)


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