The Long-Term Impact of Adolescent Adversity on Health in Middle and Older Adulthood: A Natural Experiment from the Chinese Send-Down Movement

The 1950s-1970s Chinese send-down movement can be treated as a natural experiment to study the impact of adolescent exposure on subsequent health. This paper used China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) 2010 data to evaluate the long-term impact of the Chinese send-down movement on individuals health later in life. Drawing from the life course perspective, the results from the difference-in-difference model suggested that the send-down experience had a significant impact on worse self-rated health; the pathways from structural equation models showed that subsequent achievements-age of marriage and educational attainment-had mediating effects leading the send-down experience to worse self-rated health and better mental 21health, respectively. Taken together, our results highlight the roles of the send-down experience and post-send-down characteristics in shaping health outcomes later in life.