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This paper reports preliminary findings on students enrolled in a massive open online course, who were also assigned to work in groups. Part of a larger study on the effect of groups on retention and completion in MOOCs, the paper provides students' demographics (i.e., location, gender, education level, and employment status), and motivation for taking the course. Findings show that women outnumbered men and that students mostly enrolled into the course because of a friend. Indeed, research on MOOCs demonstrates that men outnumber women and that educational pursuit and professional development are the main motivators for taking MOOCs. Yet, this paper shows that when group work is included in a MOOC, women participate more. Furthermore, for students assigned to groups in a MOOC, friends are the principal incentive for enrolling into the course. These results are discussed in light of previous research, and implications for teaching and learning in online environments addressed.

Private tutoring has expanded and intensified in China. However, no government statistical data or other empirical studies fully capture its extent and characteristics. This paper analyses private tutoring received by students in Grades 1-12 as indicated by a nationwide representative survey entitled China Family Panel Studies. The paper employs a Hurdle model to examine determinants of demand for tutoring, focusing on factors related to students and their parents. The first step is concerned with the decision to receive tutoring or not; and the second step explores factors influencing expenditures on tutoring among those who decide to receive it.

The number of students pursuing graduate qualifications has increased, especially in Asian countries and cities, such as China, Macao and Hong Kong. This paper examines the intent to pursue further studies among Chinese students according to the theory of planned behaviour. Based on responses from 321 final-year students in higher education institutions in Macao, Hong Kong and mainland China, path analysis shows that subjective norm, perceived behavioural control and attitude toward graduate studies owing to intrinsic motivation significantly affects the intent to pursue further studies. The paper also identifies the important attributes that influence students' choice of a graduate programme. These findings can help higher education management improve the effectiveness of graduate recruitment and address the concerns of Chinese students.

Background: In China, the healthcare financing structure involves multiple parties, including the government, society and individuals. Medicare Fund is an important way for the Government and society to reduce the burden of individual medical costs. However, with the aging of the population, the demand of Medicare Fund is increasing. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the sustainability of the healthcare financing structure in the context of population ageing. Objective: The purpose of this paper is to organize the characteristics of population ageing as well as healthcare financing in China. On this basis, it analyzes the impact mechanism of population ageing on healthcare financing and the sustainability of existing healthcare financing. Methods: This paper mainly adopts the method of literature research and inductive summarization. Extracting data from Health Statistics Yearbook of China and Labor and Social Security Statistics Yearbook of China. Collected about 60 pieces of relevant literature at home and abroad. Results: China has already entered a deeply ageing society. Unlike developed countries in the world, China's population ageing has distinctive feature of ageing before being rich. A healthcare financing scheme established by China, composing of the government, society, and individuals, is reasonable. However, under the pressure of population ageing, China's current healthcare financing scheme will face enormous challenges. Scholars are generally pessimistic about the sustainability of China's healthcare financing scheme. Conclusions: Population ageing will increase the expenditure and reduce the income of the Medicare Fund. This will further affect the sustainability of the healthcare financing structure. As a consequence, the state should pay particular attention to this issue and take action to ensure that the Fund continues to operate steadily. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Welfare for the disabled is becoming an important issue in China and care for people with intellectual disability is challenging because of the inadequacies in formal support and the social service system. Material and Method: Based on ethnographic research in two villages in North China, this paper analyses the dilemmas of family care for people with intellectual disability. The essential data is the ethnographic record of three cases. Results: Rural families strive to provide care through a set of arrangements and bear tremendous stress in the process. Conclusion: Family care for people with intellectual disability in rural China has been increasingly challenged by the forces of labour migration, demographic changes and the ever-growing processes of commoditization. The role of the state has to be strengthened in welfare provision to balance the weakened family care ethos in transforming societies.

China has entered into a new stage of demographic dynamics whereby population-related challenges are more complicated than ever before. The current one-child policy should be modified. However, the anticipated impacts of such a policy change should not be over-exaggerated. China's demographic challenge requires an integrated coping strategy. Changing the one-child policy may help China to solve some population-related challenges, but cannot reverse the general demographic trends. Furthermore, there are uncertainties about how the public will respond to policy changes. Socioeconomic factors have played a crucial role in determining Chinese couples' fertility behaviors. This momentum will continue and, to some extent, changes to the one-child policy may be a symbolic one. More integrated social policies should be designed and implemented at the same time as a more effective means for China to tackle future development challenges, including population problems. (Contains 1 figure and 7 footnotes.)

The primary aim of the present study was to investigate whether variations exist in child and parent attributions in predicting child academic achievement within a culture and between cultures. Participants were 158 students and their parents from three different primary schools in Hong Kong, including one British international school consisting of students who are predominantly from a British background and two Chinese public schools each with a distinct SES profile. This paper extends the findings of previous research whereby Western parents attribute their child's success to ability and Chinese parents attribute their child's success to effort. Additionally, this study found that the Chinese children's attributions differed according to the SES catchments of their schools; children from higher SES were inclined to attribute success to effort. The results are discussed in terms of parent and child attributions' prediction of child's academic achievement within Hong Kong's family demographic. (Contains 1 figure and 6 tables.)

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia. Accurate prediction and diagnosis of AD and its prodromal stage, i.e., mild cognitive impairment (MCI), is essential for the possible delay and early treatment for the disease. In this paper, we adopt the data from the China Longitudinal Aging Study (CLAS), which was launched in 2011, and includes a joint effort of 15 institutions all over the country. Four thousand four hundred and eleven people who are at least 60 years old participated in the project, where 3,514 people completed the baseline survey. The survey collected data including demographic information, daily lifestyle, medical history, and routine physical examination. In particular, we employ ensemble learning and feature selection methods to develop an explainable prediction model for AD and MCI. Five feature selection methods and nine machine learning classifiers are applied for comparison to find the most dominant features on AD/MCI prediction. The resulting model achieves accuracy of 89.2%, sensitivity of 87.7%, and specificity of 90.7% for MCI prediction, and accuracy of 99.2%, sensitivity of 99.7%, and specificity of 98.7% for AD prediction. We further utilize the SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) algorithm to visualize the specific contribution of each feature to AD/MCI prediction at both global and individual levels. Consequently, our model not only provides the prediction outcome, but also helps to understand the relationship between lifestyle/physical disease history and cognitive function, and enables clinicians to make appropriate recommendations for the elderly. Therefore, our approach provides a new perspective for the design of a computer-aided diagnosis system for AD and MCI, and has potential high clinical application value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Demography is one of the factors determining and influencing the geopolitical balance of power in international relations. Politicians are the main actors in international relations, but powerful human dynamics are at work behind them. The study of geopolitics describes these dynamics, linked to human and physical geography. In the evolution of great power competition, economic, military and technological factors are taken into account, but the importance of demographic trends, which will play a key role in the struggle for world power, is often underestimated as a political and geopolitical factor. Demography works over long periods of time, i.e., over generations. The aim of this paper is to illustrate the importance of the above theory by looking at the demographic shock that France experienced in the 19th century and the geopolitical resulting consequences. As a result of this demographic shock, France lost its supremacy as the most populous country in Europe and was definitively overtaken by Germany. It is a scenario that can be useful for understanding the evolution of demographic competition in the 21st century, such as that of China versus India. In 2023, China will lose its supremacy as the world's most populous country to India. This will be the first time that China has lost its primacy since the United Nations began tracking global demographic trends in 1950. China, like France in the past, is in danger of never catching up with its demographic disadvantage. History suggests that once a country crosses the threshold of negative population growth, regardless of the differences in national experiences, there is little that its government can do to reverse it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the major concerns about the one-child policy is its negative impact on the current and future labor force in China. People have talked about the Lewis Turning Point and the end of demographic dividends. Some of these arguments, however, can be misleading. The working-age population (ages 15 to 59) can be treated as the potential labor force supply. It is true that the continuous decline of China's fertility level over the past 30 years has partially resulted in the recent decline of the proportion of the young labor force. Nevertheless, there is no major change in the total size of the labor force. The author suggests that the shortage of the current Chinese labor force cannot be explained simply by the size of the labor force. The demographic dividend and the demographic debt are actually caused by the same demographic event: fertility decline, but the consequences are shown in different time periods. The author concludes that It is only natural that people respond to an aging population through reforming and improving population policies. However, an aging population is a consequence of both the increase in lifespan and falling fertility, and this process will not be radically reversed by merely adjusting fertility policies. What deserves more attention is an adaptation strategy to this population trend and adjusting or restructuring institutional arrangements and integrating public policies. (Contains 1 figure.)

Aim: This study aimed to assess the overall status of burnout in nurses in China on a national scale and investigate the demographic characteristics related to burnout and the relationships between demographics, job satisfaction and burnout. Methods: This was a national cross‐sectional study conducted by the Chinese Nursing Association between July 2016 and July 2017. Data were collected using a structured, self‐administered questionnaire. Results: A total of 51 406 registered nurses in 311 Chinese cities completed the questionnaire. Fifty per cent of the participants suffered burnout, and 33.8% of nurses had high scores on emotional exhaustion, 66.6% had high scores on depersonalization and 93.5% had low scores on personal accomplishment; 16.2% reported a high level of job satisfaction, only 0.4% was satisfied with their jobs and 70.7% intended to leave their jobs. Marital status, educational level, income and years of working experience affected job burnout. Nurses with a high level of burnout were more likely to have a high degree of job dissatisfaction and intend to leave their jobs. Conclusion: We found a high prevalence of burnout among nurses in China. Nursing managers need to pay more attention to job burnout and its influencing factors. Interventions to reduce nurse burnout should be implemented. SUMMARY STATEMENT: What is already known about this topic? Burnout is a prolonged response to chronic job‐related stress and it has a negative effect on job satisfaction and quality of nursing care. What this paper adds? The prevalence of burnout among nurses working in China is high.Marital status, educational level, income and years of working experience affect job burnout.Nurses with a high level of burnout have high job dissatisfaction and intend to leave. The implications of this paper: Nursing supervisors and managers need to be more aware of the high prevalence of job burnout among nurses in China.Interventions should be undertaken to prevent or reduce nurse burnout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urbanization trends in the Lower Yangtze region of China from 1500 to 1900 are examined. Data are from a variety of sources, including genealogies, local records, and other literature. An attempt is made to analyze the demographic characteristics of the urban population. "The demographic characteristics in respect to marriage, fertility and mortality found from the genealogies do reveal that there were dissimilarities between the rural and urban dwelling populations. Moreover, findings related to migration tend to support that rural to urban migration was an important factor that speeded up urbanization in the Lower Yangtze Region." (SUMMARY IN ENG), (excerpt)

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to identify the effects of recent demographic transition and rising labor costs on agricultural production structure and pattern in China during 1998-2012. Design/methodology/approach - The authors, first, theoretically discuss the effects of changing relative input prices due to rising labor cost on producers' decisions regarding input mix (substitution effect), output level, and product quality (output effect). A logarithmic mean Divisia index decomposition method is then applied to empirically identify these effects at aggregated levels, followed by an analysis based on the visualization of land use indicators on changing cropping patterns across Chinese provinces. Findings - The authors find that tightened effective agricultural labor supply and rises in rural labor costs are associated with divergent changes in input mixes and output choices across products. Producers of land-intensive products focusing more on input mix adjustment, while those of labor-intensive products seem to more likely to adjust output choices. Producers' adaption strategies also varied across Chinese provinces due to natural conditions, leading to shifts and concentrations in the regional distribution of agricultural products, with lower-value bulk products concentrating in the plain areas, whereas higher-value horticulture products increasingly prevailing in sloped areas. Originality/value - This paper illustrates how adjustments in input mixes and output choice in Chinese agriculture counteracted disadvantages caused by rising labor costs and how such adjustments are product and region specific. Based on these observations, implications regarding further innovations in production technology and institutional arrangements needed within China's agricultural sector are highlighted in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The need for a universal rural pension system has been heightened by demographic changes in rural China, including the rapid aging of the nation’s rural population and a dramatic decline in fertility. In response to these changes, China’s Government introduced the New Rural Social Pension Program (NRSPP) in 2009, a voluntary and highly subsidized pension scheme. The purpose of this paper is to assess the participation of rural farmers in the NRSPP. Furthermore, the authors examine whether the NRSPP affects the labor supply of the elderly population in China.Design/methodology/approach This paper uses household-level data from a sample of 2,020 households originating from a survey conducted by the authors in five provinces, 25 counties, and 101 villages in rural China. Using a probit model and conducting correlation analysis, the authors demonstrate the factors affecting the participation and the impact of NRSPP on labor supply of the rural elderly.Findings The results show there are several factors that are correlated with participation, such as specific policy variant in force in the respective household's province, the size of the pension payout from government, the age of sample individuals, and the value of household durable assets. Specifically, different characteristics of NRSPP policy implementation increase participation in China’s social pension program. The results suggest that the introduction of the NRSPP has not affected the labor supply of the rural elderly, in general, although it has reduced participation for the elderly who were in poor health.Originality/value Several previous studies have covered the NRSPP. However, all previous studies were based on case studies or just focused on a small region, and for this reason the results cannot reflect the populations and heterogeneity of rural areas. Therefore, a data set with a large sample size is used in this paper to provide a new perspective to fully understand the participation of NRSPP and its impacts on rural households. This paper will make an update contribution to the literature in the area of pension programs in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sheds light on the nexus of age compositional shifts and the generation of the first demographic dividend over the past several decades in China, and also discusses how this dividend could be extended We first estimate how long China's first demographic dividend will last and then compare the computed results for China with those for other selected Asian countries in order to place the Chinese case in a wider perspective. Furthermore, in view of the possibility that China's first demographic dividend will turn negative in 2014, we offer insight into how and to what extent China's labor market needs to adjust and how much labor income must increase for the first demographic dividend to remain positive up to year 2050. For this goal to be achieved, the labor income age profile needs to be shifted to a considerable extent. We conduct an exercise in which the 2007 peak labor income age of 32 years is shifted to 40 years. In the case of the elderly, this implies an annual labor income growth of 3.1 percent over the period of 39 years. Throughout this paper, we draw on a variety of computed results derived from the Chinese component of the global 'National Transfer Accounts' project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The disagreements on changed stages of demographic transition and the role of a demographic dividend in a dual economy development process often lead to wide debates among scholars about China's development stages. This paper tries to reveal the nexus between demographic transition and dual economy development: the common starting point, close-related processes, and identical characteristics of stages. Based on the empirical evidence of population dynamics, the paper supports the judgment of diminishing demographic dividends and an imminent Lewis turning point in China. The paper also argues that keeping a sustainable and steady economic growth, and becoming a high-income country as early as possible is the key and only way to close the 'aging before affluence' gap. Accordingly, the paper concludes by proposing measures to exploit the potential of the first demographic dividend, creating conditions for a second demographic dividend, and tapping new sources of economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's total floating population is more than 200 million. It will be beneficial for the improvement of urban management and urbanization quality to let more floating population settle down. Based on this, this paper uses the data of 270 cities from China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS) and China Urban Statistical Yearbook to analyze the settlement desire of the floating population, and finds that the settlement desire of the floating population in the shrinking cities is significantly stronger than that in the growing cities. Why is the settlement desire of the floating population in the shrinking cities with a decreasing population size significantly stronger than that of the growing cities? In this paper, the Logit model, Spatial Durbin Model (SDM) and Spatial Durbin Error Model (SDEM) are constructed to analyze the resettlement desire of floating population at the individual level and the urban level respectively. The results show that: (1) The proportion of the floating population family members in the shrinking cities is higher than that in the growing cities, family reunion and the concentration of interpersonal networks are the reasons for the stronger settlement desire of the floating population in the shrinking cities. (2) The high proportion of women in the floating population in shrinking cities is another reason for the strong settlement desire of the floating population in shrinking cities. At the same time, the characteristics of individuals' agricultural household registration and lower education level limit the flow of the floating population from the shrinking cities to the growing ones. (3) The costs of housing and other settlement conditions are relatively low in the shrinking cities, and it is easier for the floating population to cross the threshold of settlement and realize the settlement in the destination cities, resulting in a stronger settlement desire of the floating population in the shrinking cities. (4) Some characteristics of the surrounding cities have a significant impact on the settlement desire of the floating population in the shrinking cities, such as the ratio of housing price to income, the proportion of the floating population with agricultural household registration and the number of years of education of the floating population in the surrounding cities. In view of this, this study puts forward the following policy recommendations: Too much policy intervention is not needed against the shrinking cities, for the settlement desire of the floating population in shrinking cities remains strong, and the shrinking process remains relatively stable. The obstacles of household registration and other related systems and mechanisms should be further removed, the education level of the floating population should be improved and appropriate regulation of the housing market should be introduced to ensure a reasonable price income ratio to promote the free flow of labor elements and improve the desire of the floating population to settle down in the cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Demographic transition due to population aging is an emerging trend throughout the developing world, and it is especially acute in China, which has undergone demographic transition more rapidly than have most industrial economies. This paper quantifies the distributional effects in the context of demographic transition using an integrated recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium model with top-down behavioral microsimulation. The results of the poverty and inequality index indicate that population aging has a negative impact on the reduction of poverty while its impact is positive with regard to equality. In addition, elderly rural households are experiencing the most serious poverty, and their inequality problems compared with other household groups and within-group inequality worsen with demographic transition. These findings not only advance the previous literature but also deserve particular attention from Chinese policy-makers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This case study of Gao Village has two aims: to provide an update on Gao Village since 1997, when Gao Village (Gao 1999, 2014) leaves off, and to ponder the future direction of rural China. The article begins with an update on the development of Gao Village from the late 1990s up to 2015, dealing with several major thematic topics such as demography, family and marriage, living standards, education and health care. Using empirical evidence gathered during several years of fieldwork as background, the paper then moves on to discuss the future direction of rural China. This second part covers the current intellectual and policy debate on two crucial issues: land ownership and urbanization. The paper concludes that the Chinese state is still undecided on a grand narrative: whether to travel further in the direction of full-scale capitalism or whether to retain some kind of socialist collectivism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper provides new empirical evidence on the health consequences of rural-to-urban migration in China. We use a panel dataset from 2003 to 2006 constructed by the Research Center on the Rural Economy at the Ministry of Agriculture in China to investigate the effects of short-term and medium-term migration on health status. By combining propensity-score matching and the difference-in-difference model, we attempt to overcome the migration endogeneity issue and estimate the average treatment effect on the treated. We find that the effect of short-term migration on health in China is significantly positive mostly because of the income effect. However, the effect of longer-term continuous migration on health is insignificant and close to zero. Our results are robust to several alternative estimation techniques and a series of robustness checks. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]