Conflicts, calamities and nutritional poverty traps in a peasant economy: evidence from rural china 1929-1933

This paper uses data compiled by John Lossing Buck from his rural China survey conducted between 1929 and 1933 to analyze the impact of weather calamities and conflict on agricultural productivity, farm wages and nutrition intake. Our results support the conditions required for a Nutritional Poverty Trap (NPT) to be present, while anecdotal evidence points to the potential presence of a nutritional poverty trap for large segments of China's agricultural economy. We find a lagged effect of climate shock on nutrition, but find no evidence that the many conflicts of the day affected nutrition. This is more likely due to the avoidance of conflict zones by surveyors, but may also support the notion that the effects from conflicts were local and short-lived due to the resilience of farmers.