A Tale of Hardships: Genes, Family Education, and Children's Response to Negative Shocks

Abstract

It is widely believed that early negative shocks (e.g., diseases and malnutrition) have a long-term negative effect on children’s later achievements. Given that it could be difficult for children who face disadvantages in early life to efficiently build relevant life skills critical for their social success as adults, such a belief is quite reasonable. However, this analysis may not present the complete truth. Another important fact has been ignored: human beings have the subjective initiative to deal with crisis, and children’s response to negative shocks may play a critical role in determining future outcomes. In this study, we empirically identify children’s heterogeneous responses to negative shocks and further identify the causality between such responses and the later outcomes. We use survey data on twins in urban China to investigate the effect of “send-down” experience during China’s Cultural Revolution on children’s later social success. We find that children who are likely to respond to the hardships positively benefit significantly from the send-down experience, whereas children with a high tendency to respond to the sufferings negatively or passively are significantly harmed by the rustication experience. We further examine the determinants of children’s responses to negative shocks and find that both genes and family education play important roles in the formation of resilience in children’s future lives. In other words, some children are born optimistic, whereas some children could develop optimism through the support of their parents.