We study the living arrangements and consequences for emotional well-being of the elderly in China using data from a national probability sample survey conducted in 2010, part of the China Family Panel Studies: 14,960 households were included and information was collected for each family member. We study 7,015 people in the sample age sixty and older. We find that, compared to living independently with one's spouse, elderly respondents living with grown children are less happy, have less life satisfaction, and are more depressed, especially when the spouse is not sharing the household. The negative effects largely disappear when there also are grandchildren in the household although widows and widowers remain more prone to depression. Elderly people living in "generation-skipping" families suffer the same fate as living with adult children but no grandchildren-they are less happy and more depressed and, when not sharing responsibilities with a spouse, less satisfied with life than independent elderly couples. Finally, living alone or living with other relatives results in a significant degradation of emotional health. But the very small fraction of elderly respondents living with nonrelatives enjoys the greatest happiness and the least depression.

We use microsample data from the 2005 (1%) National Population Sample Survey in southeast China and examine the relationship between the effect of hukou status on income and return to education under China's rural^urban divide. For labor-market return we find that: (1) the influence of hukou status is deeply rooted in an indivdual's other key features (occupation, years of schooling, and working location) in the labor market, and (2) hukou status affects labor-market return primarily through its influence on people's return to education. Assisted by spline regression models, we find that the gap of return to education among people with different hukou status increases as years of schooling decrease, and reaches its peak in primary education. The data overwhelmingly suggest that individuals' human capital was largely determined by the place (rural versus urban) where they were born and received their compulsory education, which highlights the role of China's rural^urban divide in shaping people's labor-market return.

Using data from the 2010 wave of the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), we study the effects of internal migration in China on the emotional well-being of children age 10-15. The 2010 CFPS, a national probability sample survey of the Chinese population, includes 3,464 children within this age range. We compare five groups: rural children with local registration living with both parents; urban children with local registration living with both parents; children accompanying their migrant parent(s); children left behind with one parent when the other parent goes out to work; and children left behind or sent to live with others when both parents go out to work. We expected the last three groups to be at risk of increased emotional difficulties compared to children living with both parents. We tested these expectations using both conventional regression models and community fixed-effects models. The evidence supporting our expectations is very weak and inconsistent, leading us to conclude that in the Chinese context family arrangements have little impact on the emotional well-being of children. We finish by offering some conjectures as to why this is so.

The 20th century has seen unprecedented growth of the human population on this planet. While at the beginning of the century the Earth had an estimated 1.6 billion inhabitants, this number grew to 6.1 billion by the end of the century, and further significant growth is a near certainty. This paper tries to summarize what factors lie behind this extraordinary expansion of the human population and what population growth we can expect for the future. It discusses the concept of demographic transition and the preconditions for a lasting secular fertility decline. Recent fertility declines in all parts of the world now make it likely that human population growth will come to an end over the course of this century, but in parts of the developing world significant population growth is still to be expected over the coming decades. The slowing of population growth through declining birth rates, together with still increasing life expectancy, will result in a strong ageing of population age structure. Finally, this paper presents a global level systematic analysis of the relationship between population density on the one hand, and growth and fertility rates on the other. This analysis indicates that in addition to the well-studied social and economic determinants, population density also presents a significant factor for the levels and trends of human birth rates.

This article examines the relationship between birth masculinity and socio-economic levels in China. Both 2000 and 2005 data suggest the presence of a non-linear relationship between the sex ratio at birth and socio-economic status, with a lower sex ratio at birth observed among both the poorest and the richest households. This inverted-U pattern is significantly different from what is observed in India and what has been assumed previously for China. Multivariate analyses indicate that this pattern persists after the introduction of several other covariates of birth masculinity such as ethnicity, fertility, migration status, age or parity. These results suggest that further economic advances and socio-economic mobility could contribute to the return to normalcy of the sex ratio at birth.