Carol H. Shiue. 2013. Human capital and fertility in Chinese clans before modern growth. Working Paper 19661. National Bureau of Economic Research
Abstract: This paper studies the pre-industrial origins of modern-day fertility decline. The setting is in Anhwei Province, China over the 13th to 19th centuries, a period well before the onset of China’s demographic transition and industrialization. There are four main results. First, we observe non-Malthusian effects in which high income households had relatively fewer children. Second, higher income households had relatively more educated sons, consistent with their greater ability to support major educational investments. Third, those households that invested in education had fewer children, suggesting that households producing educated children were reallocating resources away from child quantity and towards child quality. Fourth, over time, demand for human capital fell significantly. The most plausible reason is the declining returns to educational investments. The findings point to a role for demography in explaining China’s failure to industrialize early on.
摘要：本论文研究当代生产力下降问题在前工业社会的起源。研究背景为13到19世纪的中国安徽，这段时期恰好处于中国人口转变和工业化之前。主要研究结果有4个：第一，我们观察到了非马尔萨斯效应（高收入家庭拥有较少的孩子）；第二，高收入家庭中受教育的孩子数量较多（比例），这和他们能够支持主要教育投资的高能力相一致；第三，那些投资于教育的家庭往往拥有较少的孩子，这说明这些培养受过教育的孩子的家庭实际上是把增加孩子数量的资源转移到提升孩子质量上面；第四，随着时间的推移，对人力资本的需求严重下降，对这一现象最合理的解释可能是教育投资回报率的不断下降。这些发现对用人口学解释中国未能尽早实现工业化具有一定的指向作用。
数据来源： Tongcheng Genealogies
研究方法：计量回归；实证检验
Conclusion: Since the process of industrialization involves dramatic increases in the return to human capital, the critical issue in terms of long-run development is the evolution of non-Malthusian dynamics in families investing in human capital. In China, there is evidence of fertility control for human capital objectives starting as early as the17th century. This presents new evidence that child quantity quality tradeoffs are not necessarily the direct consequence of industrialization, which had not yet occurred in China.
Among Chinese families with at least some attributes of status, family size was smaller, and educational attainment higher. Two reasons are behind this. First, more educated families were more likely to produce more educated sons. This is consistent with the notion of costs of education determining incentives to invest in education, since more educated families were likely to have better access to channels of education. Second, higher educational attainment was typically associated with lower birth order, so constraining family sizes increased average education.
An incidental result of the examination system was that there was the emergence of services that could be provided By men who tried but failed the examinations—doctors, teachers, and writers. Ultimately, however, the government controlled the number of high paying occupations that could be had upon earning an education. Over time, as population increased, the number of such opportunities declined. One might speculate how increasing opportunities for human capital investments should have resulted in the reverse pattern of human capital accumulation for China, in which education continues to increase rather than decrease. In this sense, it may be more appropriate to ask not what triggers the change in behavior from the Malthusian era to today, but rather what allows it to spread within the population.
Further research on other economies within and outside of China is needed to determine how general these findings may be. If Malthusian economies of the past were not purely, and similarly Malthusian, then differences that lie in the pre-industrial era might help to explain why modern technologies do not give all countries the same footing to develop further. These implications are important to our understanding of long-run growth.
结论：自从工业化进程涉及到人力资本回报的显著提高之后，与长期发展有关的重要问题就成为家庭人力资本投资中的非马尔萨斯动力学的演变过程。有证据表明在中国早在17世纪就开始了为人力资本目标而进行的节育，这表明儿童的数量—质量权衡并不必然是工业化的直接后果，况且彼时工业化在中国还未发生。
在中国家庭中至少总有一些地位属性，家庭规模越小，受教育程度越高。有两个原因可以解释这一现象：第一，受教育越多的家庭越有可能培养出受教育多的孩子，这和教育成本决定教育投资动机的见解是一致的，因为受教育多的家庭可能拥有较好的教育渠道；第二，高教育程度与低出生顺序显著相关，所以限制家庭规模可以提高平均受教育水平。
考试制度的一个偶然结果是尝试考试却失败的人所能提供的服务—医生、教师和作家。最终，政府会控制超过接受教育者所获工资的高薪职业的数量。随着时间的推移，人口增加，这种机会的数量会下降。也许有人会思考在教育持续增加而非下降的中国，增加人力资本投资的机会应该如何导致人力资本积累的相反模式。从这个意义上说，相对于探究是什么引发了马尔萨斯时代到现在的行为变化而言，探究是什么引起其在人口中的传播也许更为合理。
对中国国内和国外其他经济的进一步调查是决定这些发现的普遍性程度所需要的。如果过去的马尔萨斯经济是不纯粹的而仅仅是类似的，那么前工业时代的差异也许有助于解释为何现代技术没有给所有国家相同的进一步发展的基础。
（By 杨帆) |
