The level and scope of social change underway in China represents one of the great social experiments of our time. The reform process has included the privatization of functions previously performed by the state and the unleashing of private entrepreneurship and a range of initiatives in the public sector. The subsequent effects on economic and social behavior and also on health, nutrition, and demographic behavior have increased considerably the polarization of both societies and had profound effects on behavior. Similarly membership of China in the World Trade Organization is expected to unleash in the 2002-2010 period another major restructuring of the Chinese economy. China joined the WTO December 11, 2001. The China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) is unique in its scope for monitoring these changes in China. This project proposes to collect and process and disseminate two additional rounds of data collected in China. The final result is that a seventeen-year period from 1989-2006 in China will have been monitored. Under NIH funding (along with cofunding from the NSF, the Luce Foundation, Mellon Foundation, and the Chinese Ministry of Public Health), the CHNS has monitored these transitions in a manner that allows us to capture many of the crucial dimensions of rapid change at the community, household and individual level and to examine the interrelationships between these changes and health and nutrition. This survey asks about employment and income received by working-age household members; time use; diet and nutritional status; health status and use of health services; marriages and pregnancies experienced by reproductive-age women; household size and composition; living arrangements; care of children and elders; and housing conditions. Detailed dietary and anthropometric data and blood pressure measurements are also collected. The instruments include data collection at the community as well as individual and household levels through a monitoring of prices, a wide range of services, and infrastructure.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 308 publications
