Family Life Cycle and Peasant Income in Socialist China: Evidence from Qin Village

Abstract

Using account books and household registers from a production team of Qin village in Jiangsu Province, China, this article examines the changing laborer-to-dependent ratios in the peasant households over the family life cycle and their effects on income disparity within the collective in the 1970s. It demonstrates that birth control in the late 1970s caused remarkable changes to the family cycle of the households, which in turn affected their economic situation in different phases of the cycle. Moreover, the changing family cycle interwove with different labor remuneration systems to shape economic differentiation in the collective. Income inequality among the households was the greatest in the early 1970s under the egalitarian system and greatly reduced in the late 1970s when work incentives were introduced to the village.