Time：June 1, 2022（Wed.）10:00-11:30

Zoom：for PKU students only, please send your info to 18701189960@163.com to get the link.

Speaker：Huihua Xie（Assistant Professor at the School of Management and Economics, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen.）

Topic：Early Childhood Conditions and Adolescent Mental Health

Abstract：

We investigate how early life circumstances induced by trade liberalization affect adolescent mental health in China. We find that children born in prefectures more exposed to an exogenous change in international trade policy experienced a significant relative decline in the incidence of severe depression during adolescence, as classified by the CES-D scale. We show that these results are not driven by preexisting trends in the outcomes, and that the estimated relationships are robust to controls for initial prefecture attributes and other policy changes. Improvements in parental income, early childhood investments, and maternal care provision are likely operative channels of impact.

Speaker Bio：

Huihua Xie is an Assistant Professor at the School of Management and Economics, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the National University of Singapore. Her research aims to understand the origins of human development differences and the effectiveness of alternative intervention strategies to foster human skills, improve labor market outcomes, and remediate disadvantages. Huihua’s research has been published in top economic journals, including the Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Health Economics, etc.