The average and distributional effects of teenage adversity on long-term health

Abstract

A central question in human development is what causes health inequalities over the life cycle. This paper links adversity in the teen years to individuals’ long-term health outcomes. We examine a mandatory rustication program, the “send-down” policy during China's Cultural Revolution, and employ a regression discontinuity design to estimate the impact on individuals’ physical and mental health outcomes 40 years later. Our results suggest that rusticated youths were more likely to develop mental disorders but not to have worse physical outcomes. Further assessing distributional effects through marginal treatment effect (MTE), we find strong heterogeneous treatment effects and selection on gains.