PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Luo, Wei
AU  - Huang, Wei
AU  - Park, Albert
TI  - Social Norms and the Impact of Early Life Events on Gender Inequality
AID  - 10.3368/jhr.1020-11229R3
DP  - 2024 Sep 11
TA  - Journal of Human Resources
PG  - 1020-11229R3
4099  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2024/09/03/jhr.1020-11229R3.short
4100  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2024/09/03/jhr.1020-11229R3.full
AB  - We study the influence of social norms in shaping the impact of early life exposure to China’s Great Famine on gender inequality. We model how social norms interact with adverse shocks to affect male and female survival chances and influence subsequent human capital investments. We test these predictions empirically by using the 2000 China Population Census that has information on birthplace and estimate a differencein-differences model that combines cohort and regional variation in exposure to the famine with regional variation in the culture of son preference. We find that son preference buffers the negative impact of intrauterine famine shocks on cohort male- to-female sex ratios but actually reduces famine’s impact on gender inequality in health and education.