Clans and Calamity: How Social Capital Saves Lives during China’s Great Famine

This paper examines the role of social capital in disaster relief during China's Great Famine from 1958 to 1961. We use the number of genealogies—books recording family trees—as a proxy for the density of family clans, one of the most important vehicles of social capital in rural China. We employ a double-difference identification strategy that exploits the timing of the famine as well as the cross-sectional differences in the pre-famine measures of social capital. Using county-level mortality data from 1954 to 1966, we find that rise in the mortality rate during the famine is significantly smaller in counties with a higher clan density. We corroborate this finding using data from a nationally representative household survey and show that, while individuals born before the famine are more likely to report hunger experience than those born after the famine, this difference is significantly smaller in regions with a higher clan density. We explore three possible mechanisms. First, we find no strong evidence that social capital reduces mortality by preventing a drastic drop in grain production. Second, we provide supporting evidence for historical accounts that social capital enables villagers to coordinate against excessive government procurement. Third, we show suggestive evidence that social capital facilitates risk-sharing through informal lending and borrowing. These results suggest that the effect of social capital on famine alleviation may be primarily ex post.