POLITICAL ECONOMY: Elite Strategies for Big Shocks – The Case of the Fall of the Ming; Professor Carol Shiue (University of Colorado-Boulder)

Abstract

This paper employs unique genealogical data to study skill acquisition decisions over seven generations as people in a Central Chinese county responded to the fall of the Ming dynasty. The setting allows us to focus on the responses of interlinked families, rather than on conditions in the places in which they live. The shock reduced China’s overall population by some 16%, a scale of destruction mirrored in Central China. Exploiting variation in destruction levels across villages within Tongcheng, we show that the shock drastically lowered the status of elites–being high-ranking scholar-officials– that experienced the shock first-hand in their lifetimes. And yet, the impact on the elites reversed: from the third to the fifth generation, descendants of first-generation men who suffered the heaviest losses acquired disproportionately more elite status than descendants of those that suffered less in the first generation. We argue that trauma associated with the loss of land and property led to a stronger focus on the relatively portable skills of scholar-officials, and this change in attitudes was transmitted within families from generation to generation. Evidence comes from finding that sons benefit more strongly from the skills of their elite fathers among first-generation treated compared to control family lines. In addition, this difference exists to a greater extent after than before the shock. Migration is crucial for this reversal in skill acquisition. Comparing historically destroyed with not destroyed regions instead of treated with control family lines, we find fewer elites in the former, which is because families that outmigrate after the shock tend to invest disproportionately into elite skills given their relatively young age and affluence.

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