Political Conflict and Development Dynamics: Economic Legacies of the Cultural Revolution

TY - JOUR

T1 - Political Conflict and Development Dynamics: Economic Legacies of the Cultural Revolution

AU - Bai, Liang

AU - Wu, Lingwei

PY - 2023/10/27

Y1 - 2023/10/27

N2 - As a multi-faceted socio-political movement in twentieth-century China, the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) witnessed conflict and social upheaval. This paper investigates its economic legacies, exploiting geographic variation in revolutionary intensity, measured by the number of resulting deaths. Using a newly assembled county-level panel dataset over five decades, we find worse-affected areas performed slightly better at baseline, but were slower to industrialize. This effect was large in the early 1980s before diminishing to become insignificant by 2000. Using individual-level census data, we find more-exposed cohorts are less likely to obtain higher education degrees and to work in professional and entrepreneurial occupations.

AB - As a multi-faceted socio-political movement in twentieth-century China, the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) witnessed conflict and social upheaval. This paper investigates its economic legacies, exploiting geographic variation in revolutionary intensity, measured by the number of resulting deaths. Using a newly assembled county-level panel dataset over five decades, we find worse-affected areas performed slightly better at baseline, but were slower to industrialize. This effect was large in the early 1980s before diminishing to become insignificant by 2000. Using individual-level census data, we find more-exposed cohorts are less likely to obtain higher education degrees and to work in professional and entrepreneurial occupations.

M3 - Article

SN - 0022-0507

VL - 83

SP - 981

EP - 1017

JO - JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY

JF - JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY

IS - 4

ER -