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Poverty, Parental Ill Health And Children’S Access To Schooling In Rural Gansu, China, Emily Hannum, Tanja Sargent, Shengchao Yu

Emily C. Hannum

As reforms to China's health care system have raised costs to users in recent decades, studies suggest that ill health has become intimately tied to social stratification as both a precipitant and a consequence of poverty. The problem may be particularly pronounced in China’s poorest rural populations. Focusing on Gansu Province, one of China’s poorest, this paper investigates the possibility that the ill health of adults also carries cross-generational consequences, through interfering with the education of children. Analyzing a survey of children in 100 rural villages, we find that parental illness is experienced disproportionately by the most economically vulnerable children. …