Cameron Dougall Campbell

Infant and Child Mortality Among the Qing Nobility: Implications for Two Types of Positive Check

Demographers, as early as Malthus, have assumed that in traditional China the positive check, mortality, was largely beyond human control. This paper re-examines the role of the positive check in late imperial China through an analysis of an historical source of unprecedented demographic detail and accuracy: the genealogy of the Qing (1644–1911) imperial lineage. Basing ourselves on our calculations on the infant, child, and young adult mortality of 33,000 lineage members born in Beijing between 1700 and 1840, we conclude that during the late eighteenth century, many lineage couples regularly used infanticide to control the number and sex of their infants. At the same time, they also took advantage of innovations in paediatric care to protect the children they decided to keep. Although these results derive from an elite population, they, nevertheless, call into question our understanding of the operation of the positive check in late imperial Chinas demographic system, suggesting a much larger potential ...

Differential Fertility and the Distribution of Traits: The Case of IQ

A recurrent fear during the past century is that the mean IQ level of populations will decline because persons with lower IQ scores have above-average fertility. Most microlevel data demonstrate such fertility differentials, but population IQ levels have risen rather than fallen. In this article, a simple two-sex model shows that negative fertility differentials are consistent with falling, rising, or constant IQ distributions. Under a wide variety of conditions, a constant pattern of fertility differentials will produce an unchanging, equilibrium distribution of IQ scores in the population. What matters for IQ trends is how the IQ distribution in one generation relates to the equilibrium distribution implied by that generations fertility differentials. Intuition fails in this important area because it does not account for the macro structure within which micro results must be interpreted.

The Changing Population of China . Edited by Peng Xizhe and Guo Zhigang. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, Inc., 2000.

1. Introduction.2. Trends and Geographic Differentials in Mortality: Hao Hongsheng. 3. Trends and Regional Differentials in Fertility Transition: Tu Ping.4. Health and Health Care in Transition: Tang Shenglan.5. Population Policy and Family Planning Programme: Xie Zhenmin.6. Age and Sex Structures: Li Yongping & Peng Xizhe.7. Population Aging and Old Age Security: Du Peng and Tu Ping.8. Marriage Patterns: Zeng Yi.9. Family Patterns: Guo Zhigang.10. Education: Peng Xizhe.11. Employment: Zuo Xuejin.12. Female Population: Tan Lin and Peng Xizhe.13. Urbanization: Zhong Fenggan.14. Floating Population and Internal Migration in China: Sun Changmin.15. International Migration Patterns: Ye Wenzhen.16. Ethnic Population: Du Peng.17. Population and Environment in China: Dai Xingyi.18. Population of China: Prospects and Challenges: Zhai Zhenwu.19. The Distribution of Chinas Population and Its Changes: Wang Guixin.20. Hong Kong Special Administrative Region: Waves of Chinese Immigrants and their Children: Lui Ping-keung.Index.

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We examine the effects on adult and old age mortality of childhood living arrangements and other aspects of family context in early life. We focus on features of family context that have already been shown to be associated with infant or child mortality in historical and developing country populations. We apply discrete-time event-history analysis to longitudinal, individual-level household register data for a rural population in northeast China from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Loss of a mother in childhood, a short preceding birth interval, and high maternal age were all associated with elevated mortality risks later in life. Such effects persist in a model with fixed effects that account for unobserved characteristics of the community and household. An important implication of these results is that in high-mortality populations, features of early-life family context that are associated with elevated infant and child mortality may also predict adverse mortality outcomes in adulthood.

Long-Term Mortality Consequences of Childhood Family Context in Liaoning, China, 1749-1909

Though internal migration in China during the Qing era (1644–1911) was mostly unrestricted, the government tightly controlled the movement of peasants who worked state lands in frontier regions and certain other locations. Such peasants accounted for 5–10% of Chinas population. In the state farms of northeast China, households could move legally only from one place to another within the system. Departure from the system was illegal. In this article, one of the first quantitative studies of migration in late imperial China, we apply discrete-time event-history methods to longitudinal, nominative household register data from six northeast Chinese state farm systems to compare how characteristics of the farm system, village, and household influenced the chances of legal moves and illegal departures. We show that among these state peasants, who were supposedly “unfree,” migration was not uncommon. We also show that the determinants of legal and illegal migration differed substantially. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for our understanding of migration processes in late imperial China.

Free and unfree labor in Qing China: Emigration and escape among the bannermen of northeast China, 1789–1909

We demonstrate that in northeast China before the twentieth century, kin groups played an important role in structuring patterns of inequality. There were substantial differences in the demographic behavior and social attainment of individuals according to kin-group membership even after differences between villages and households were accounted for. There was also considerable continuity in the relative status of kin groups before the twentieth century. More tentatively, there was continuity in the relative status of kin groups from the nineteenth century through the last half of the twentieth century. Our results are based on quantitative analysis of demographic behavior and social attainment of families covered by contemporary survey data that we have linked to a database of historical household registers, the CMGPD-LN. The results confirm the need for studies of stratification to move beyond the current focus on parent-child associations in outcomes to examine the role played by larger kin networks in creating and sustaining patterns of inequality.

Kinship and the Long-Term Persistence of Inequality in Liaoning, China, 1749-2005.

To assess claims about the role of the extended family in late imperial Chinese society, we examine the influence of kin network characteristics on marriage, reproduction, and attainment in Liaoning Province in Northeast China in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We compare the influences on outcomes of the number and status of different types of kin as well as the seniority of the individual within each type of kin group. We find that the characteristics of kin outside the household did matter for individual outcomes but that patterns of effects were nuanced. While based on our results we concur that kin networks were important units of social and economic organization in late imperial China, we conclude that their role was complex.

Kin Networks, Marriage and Social Mobility in Late Imperial China

Efforts to improve public health and sanitation began in China well before the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. Between 1911 and 1931, the Chinese-run North Manchurian Plague Prevention Service carried out a range of public health activities in northeast China, successfully fighting not only plague but a variety of other epidemic infectious diseases, such as, for example, cholera. At the same time, there were local efforts to improve health, mainly in urban areas, by establishing medical colleges and hospitals, improving infrastructure, promulgating hygiene regulations, making vaccinations available, and carrying out educational campaigns. In Beijing, the subject of this study, the sewage system was renovated, the water supply was improved, and a variety of initiatives were undertaken to improve sanitation and public health. During the 1930s, the Nationalist government established a Ministry of Health and formulated a comprehensive national health policy focusing on rural areas. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, the Communists instituted a wide range of public health measures in the rural areas they controlled.

Public Health Efforts in China before 1949 and Their Effects on Mortality: The Case of Beijing

Author(s): Campbell, Cameron; Lee, James Z | Abstract: Most micro-level quantitative studies of Chinese society rely on individual level data from locally produced patrilineal genealogies or from state generated household registers. Stevan Harrell, Ts’ui-jung Liu, Ted Telford, and Zhongwei Zhao and their associates use genealogies to estimate trends in demographic rates over the very long term, especially for southeastern, south central, and southern China. We and Arthur Wolf and his and our collaborators use Qing dynastic (1640-1911) and Japanese colonial (1905-1945) household registers from Liaoning and Taiwan Provinces in northeast and southeast China respectively to examine associations between individual and household characteristics on the one hand and demographic behavior on the other, largely during the last two centuries.Several studies have identified shortcomings in these sources from internal evidence, comparison with predictions from demographic models, and micro-simulations. Lineage genealogies rarely record wives and daughters, and usually omit sons who die without male offspring, especially if they die during infancy or childhood in the remote past (Harrell 1987; Telford 1990). They rarely provide data on marriage timing and often do not even record any vital data at all (Harrell 2003). Household registers appear to record most wives, but not necessarily most daughters and may even miss some sons. While recording of vital events tends to be complete, some registers appear to underrecord mortality especially among very elderly males (Lee and Campbell 1997). Most recently, micro-simulation revealed that the selectivity against extinct patrilines could distort estimates of demographic rates from genealogies, biasing mortality estimates downward and fertility estimates upward (Zhao 2001). In a caveat, Zhao (2001) noted that other forms of selection could further bias estimates from genealogies, but could not be accounted for in his simulation model.

State Views and Local Views of Population: Linking and Comparing Genealogies and Household Registers in Liaoning, 1749–1909

Comparison and comparability lie at the heart of any comparative social science. Still, precise comparison is virtually impossible without using similar methods and similar data. In recent decades, social demographers, historians, and economic historians have compiled and made available a large number of micro-level data sets of historical populations for North America and Europe. Studies using these data have already made important contributions to many academic disciplines. In a similar spirit, we introduce five new micro-level historical panel data sets from East Asia, including the China Multi-Generational Panel Dataset–Liaoning (CMGPD-LN) 1749–1909, the China Multi-Generational Panel Dataset–Shuangcheng (CMGPD-SC) 1866–1913, the Japanese Ninbetsu-Aratame-Cho Population Register Database–Shimomoriya and Niita (NAC-SN) 1716–1870, the Korea Multi-Generational Panel Dataset–Tansung (KMGPD-TS) 1678–1888, and the Colonial Taiwan Household Registration Database (CTHRD) 1906–1945. These data sets in total contain more than 3.7 million linked observations of 610,000 individuals and are the first such Asian data to be made available online or by application. We discuss the key features and historical institutions that originally collected these data; the subsequent processes by which the data were reconstructed into individual-level panels; their particular data limitations and strengths; and their potential for comparative social scientific research.