“Clans and Calamity: How Social Capital Saved Lives during China’s Great Famine”, Jiarui Cao, Yiqing Xu, Chuanchuan Zhang2022-06 (economics, sociology)⁠:

• We study the role of social capital in disaster relief during China’s Great Famine.

• We measure social capital using the density of family clans in rural China.

• Death toll was smaller in counties with higher clan density.

• Rural residents from communities with more clans report fewer hunger experiences.

• Clans helped organize villagers against state expropriation, thus saving lives.

This paper examines the role of social capital, embedded in kinship-based clans, in disaster relief during China’s Great Famine (1958^–₃1961_63ya).

Using a county-year panel and a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that:

the rise in the mortality rate during the famine years is statistically-significantly less in counties with a higher clan density. Analysis using a nationally representative household survey corroborates this finding. Investigation of potential mechanisms suggests that social capital’s impact on famine may have operated through enabling collective action against excessive government procurement.

These results provide evidence that societal forces can ameliorate damages caused by faulty government policies in times of crisis.

[Keywords: social capital, disasters, family clans, China’s great famine, mortality]

See Also:

• The Institutional Causes of China’s Great Famine, 1959^–₂1961_63ya

• Food Availability, Entitlements and the Chinese Famine of 1959^–₂1961_63ya

• Relationship between rice farming and polygenic scores potentially linked to agriculture in China

• Blood Is Thicker than Water: Family Size and Leader Deposition in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

• High consanguinity promotes intergenerational wealth concentration in socioeconomically privileged Krummhörn families of the 18^th and 19^th centuries

• The Tragedy of the Nomenklatura: Career Incentives and Political Radicalism during China’s Great Leap Famine

• Kinship, fractionalization and corruption

• Kin selection and ethnic group selection

• Sons and Lovers: Political Stability in China and Europe Before the Great Divergence