This paper documents persistence in the power of elite families in Central China despite dynastic change. We study the impact of the fall of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) on couples and their descendants (treatment of people), and present evidence on the response of multigenerational family lines to a big shock. Local Ming elites suffered a decline in influence in the short run, but in the long-run their descendants recovered and tightened their grip on power in their role as the elites of the new Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). In contrast to the recovery of family lines, the fall of Ming had a more persistently negative impact on the regions that historically were most strongly negatively affected by the shock (treatment of regions). The paper suggests that the elite reversal is due to trauma caused by Ming destruction that shifted norms towards the most socially respectable career paths based on the civil service exam; these norms were, to a greater degree, intergenerationally transmitted in family lines that suffered more from the destruction in the fall of the Ming dynasty.
Authors
- Acknowledgements & Disclosure
- Shiue acknowledges support from the National Institutes of Health (NICHD) through Award HD 042731-01 “Intergenerational and Interfamily Economic Links”. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3386/w33121
- Pages
- 68
- Published in
- United States of America
Table of Contents
- NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES 1
- Carol H. Shiue Wolfgang Keller 1
- Working Paper 33121 httpwww.nber.orgpapersw33121 1
- NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge MA 02138 November 2024 1
- Elite Strategies for Big Shocks The Case of the Fall of the Ming Carol H. Shiue and Wolfgang Keller NBER Working Paper No. 33121 November 2024 JEL No. N35 2
- Carol H. Shiue Department of Economics University of Colorado Boulder Boulder CO 80309 and NBER carol.shiuecolorado.edu 2
- Wolfgang Keller Department of Economics University of Colorado Boulder Boulder CO 80309-0256 and NBER Wolfgang.Kellercolorado.edu 2
- 1 Introduction 3
- 2 The Fall of the Ming Dynasty 8
- 2.1 Macro Developments 8
- 2.2 Tongcheng County Developments until the Fall of the Ming 9
- 2.3 Tongchengs Elite in the Ming-Qing Transition 10
- 3 Data 13
- 3.1 Chinese Family Genealogies as a Source of Economic Data 13
- 3.2 The Sample Seven Clan Genealogies from Tongcheng 14
- 4 The Impact of the Fall of the Ming on Being Elite 22
- 4.1 Treatment of People 22
- 4.2 Treatment of Regions 25
- I r δ 25
- 4.3 Elite Strategies towards the Fall of the Ming 27
- 5 Increased Emphasis on the 32
- 6 Conclusions 37
- References 38
- A Data 43
- A.1 Sources and Data Characteristics 43
- B Genealogical Data and Sample Composition 48
- B.1 Genealogies as Data Source 49
- B.2 Sample Representativeness 50
- C Long Family Lines The Five Generations Sample 52
- D Supplemental Material 57
- D.1 Extending Treatment Assignment Across Generations 57
- D.2 Treatment of People and Treatment of Regions Estimation Results 58
- D.3 Ming Elites versus Ming Non-Elites 60
- E Robustness 61
- E.1 Treatment Time Window 61
- E.2 Elite Definition 62
- E.3 Tongcheng Capital City and Distance to Tongcheng 64
- E.4 Parental Allocation of Resources 66
- E.5 Elite versus Social Status and Lifespan 66
- F Graduation Official Position and Income 67
