Papers

Peer-reviewed Publications:

This paper studies the marital fertility of five Chinese lineages since the seventeenth century, mainly in Qing (1644-1911) China. The results demonstrate a unique pattern of Chinese marital fertility by exploiting new genealogical data and studying more than 50,000 individuals from five lineages. Contrary to the conventional wisdom on Chinese fertility, the marital fertility rates in the period were moderate, and lower than those of Northwest Europe in certain periods. On the other hand, in line with the classic ideas, this paper finds no clear indication of two fertility controls within marriages, parity-dependent early stopping and parity-dependent longer birth spacing. The results suggest marital fertility in imperial China was a unique combination of moderate rates with no deliberate limitations.
Asia-Pacific Economic History Review, Volume 63, Issue 2, pp. 200-224 (2023), https://doi.org/10.1111/aehr.12269.
Awarded the 2023 Sir Timothy Coghlan Prize.

This study uses the genealogical records of 36,456 men from six Chinese lineages to test one of the fundamental assumptions of the Malthusian model. Did higher living standards result in increased reproduction? An empirical investigation of China between 1350 and 1920 finds a positive relationship between social status and net reproduction. Degree and office holders, or the literati produced greater than twice as many surviving sons as non-degree holders. The analysis explores the impact of social status on both the intensive and extensive margins of fertility—namely, reduction in child mortality and better access to marriages. The high income and strong kin network of the literati greatly contributed to their reproductive success.
Journal of Population Economics, Volume 36, pp. 2025–2070, (2023), https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-023-00960-2

The Communist Party of China (CPC) achieved a series of military successes in revolutionary wars. Based on new county-level panel datasets from China, this study uses the shocks brought about by a civil and foreign war to test the impact of Confucianism on the war mobilization capacity of the CPC. We find that, during the civil war, Confucianism did not significantly affect CPC’s war mobilization; however, during the foreign war, it significantly improved CPC’s capacity to mobilize people. This demonstrates the differentiated effects of Confucianism by war type through three different mechanisms: “loyalty,” “just war,” and “patriotism.” Our findings shed light on the role of native cultural norms in collective action.
Cliometrica, Volume 18, pages 493–529 (2024), https://doi.org/10.1007/s11698-023-00273-0.
With Yang Cai & Shengmin Sun

In unified growth models, a key to achieving sustained economic growth is the evolving nexus between population dynamics and technological change. This paper uses the genealogical records of 36,456 males to investigate the nexus—the intergenerational transmission of reproduction and human capital—within six Chinese lineages from 1350 to 1920. By examining the relationship between reproduction and long-run reproductive success, the empirical results reveal that the optimal level of reproduction exceeded the sample median. This finding suggests that greater reproduction in each generation was conducive to long-run reproductive success. In exploring the mechanisms through which reproduction affected long-run reproductive success, I investigate the relationship between child quantity and quality. The results indicate an absence of quantity-quality trade-off of children in the six lineages. This paper concludes that, in Ming–Qing (1368–1911) China, opting for larger families conferred definite advantages upon high-status men, enabling them to produce a greater number of high-quality male descendants across successive generations.

The high rate of female infanticide in imperial China is not a hidden secret. The California School argues that the Chinese constantly practiced female infanticide to limit the number of their children, but quantitative evidence is scant. This paper uses newly digitized genealogical records produced by six Chinese lineages in the Yangzi Delta to reinvestigate daughters’ survival in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties. After considering the selection biases of genealogical data, we construct two samples of 19,516 fathers and 6,000 daughters, respectively. We find that daughters were more likely to be under-reported than killed – the estimated proportion of daughters dying of infanticide and parental neglect was about 21.4 percent, and that of un-registration was about 47.5 percent. Although the rates are comparable with the estimates from the earlier works, this paper argues that female infanticide was not an effective check to population growth in late imperial China, as suggested by the California School.
With Runzhuo Zhai (University of Oxford)