Selection and stunting effects of famine: Case study of the Great Chinese Famine.” ANU Working Paper

We find that even though survivors of the Chinese famine are as tall as the rest of the Chinese population, the famine did retard growth and have a long term stunting effect. Since taller children are more likely to survive famine, we argue that the apparent lack of observable stunting is an artefact of selection effects. We propose a novel method for isolating the stunting effect, using the height of the second generation to control for possible selection effects. Utilizing data from the China Nutrition and Health Survey, we successfully estimate the stunting effect for survivors of the 1959–1961 Chinese famine. Once genetic predisposition is controlled for, rural females are estimated to be between 1 and 1.5cm shorter and rural males between 0.5 and 1.3cm