Fellow Sufferers' Sympathy: Mao's Send-Down Movement and the Allocation of Family Resources

• Other Authors: Mu, Kai (author.)
• Format: Others
• Language: English; Chinese
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://repository.lib.cuhk.edu.hk/en/item/cuhk-1292290

在本论文中我试图利用中国双胞胎数据识别“同病相怜”、利他和偏爱在家庭资源分配中所起的作用。在数据中，许多受访的双胞胎及他们的非双胞胎兄弟姐妹经历了文革时期的知识青年上山下乡运动，而上山下乡则被普遍认为是一种使人痛苦的负面经历。该运动类似于一个“政策实验”，外生地改变了一个家庭中两位双胞胎和某位非双胞胎姊妹所共有的负面经历，即上山下乡经历。我建立了一个简单的理论模型来讨论分别识别同病相怜、利他和偏爱所需的条件。实证结果提供了同病相怜、利他与偏爱存在的证据，还显示了上山下乡本身对于姊妹间亲密度的负面作用。具体来讲，一位经历过上山下乡的非双胞胎姊妹会向经历较长上山下乡的那位双胞胎提供额外的钱物赠予；另一方面，由于上山下乡导致姊妹们在成长阶段彼此分离，从而关系疏远，上山下乡本身又会减少双胞胎从非双胞胎姊妹处得到的钱物赠予。我发现女性非双胞胎姊妹相比男性表现出了更多的同病相怜，而这一结果与心理学文献中的发现一致。我还讨论了不同性别双胞胎与非双胞胎在另外一些行为上的异质性并分析可能是遗漏变量偏误导致了这种异质性，亦或是由于其他偏好或决策行为，例如父母出于养老的考虑而内生地改变子女的偏好 。伴随着未来更多数据的出现，我们还可以对同病相怜和相关问题进行更多研究。 === In this thesis I use Chinese Twins Data to identify the roles of Fellow Sufferers’ Sympathy, together with altruism and favoritism, in the allocation of family resources. In the dataset, many twins and their non-twin siblings experienced the forced rustication movement during the Cultural Revolution, which is widely regarded as harmful and suffering experience. This setting provides a “policy experiment” creating exogenous within-twin variation in common suffering experience with the twin pair’s non-twin siblings. I develop a simple theoretical framework and show the condition of separately identifying Fellow Sufferers’ Sympathy, altruism and favoritism. The empirical results show evidence of fellow sufferers’ sympathy, together with altruism and favoritism, and also show the direct negative role of rustication on inter-sibling intimacy. To be specific, a non-twin sibling who suffered from rustication would provide extra transfer to the twin who was rusticated for a longer time due to fellow sufferers’ sympathy. A non-twin sibling will, on the other hand, provide less transfer to the twin who was rusticated for a longer duration due to weakened intimacy caused by separation during adolescence. I find that female non-twin siblings exhibit greater fellow sufferers’ sympathy relative to male non-twin siblings, which is consistent with findings in psychology literature. I also show heterogeneity between male and female twins on several other observed behavioral patterns and argue that while some heterogeneity may be due to omitted variable bias, others may reflect other aspects of preferences and intra-household decision-making such as endogenous preference formation and old-age support. Further researches on fellow sufferers’ sympathy and related issues could be conducted when additional data is available. === Mu, Kai. === Thesis M.Phil. Chinese University of Hong Kong 2016. === Includes bibliographical references (leaves ). === Abstracts also in Chinese. === Title from PDF title page (viewed on …). === Detailed summary in vernacular field only.