TY - BOOK ID - 135825939 TI - Local Elections and Consumption Insurance : Evidence From Chinese Villages AU - Yao, Yang AU - Gan, Li AU - Xu, Lixin Colin PY - 2007 PB - Washington, D.C., The World Bank, DB - UniCat KW - Administrative Costs KW - Consumption KW - Consumption Insurance KW - Consumption Smoothing KW - Currencies and Exchange Rates KW - E-Government KW - Economic Theory and Research KW - Farmers KW - Finance and Financial Sector Development KW - Financial Intermediation KW - Financial Literacy KW - Governance KW - Household Consumption KW - Household Head KW - Household Income KW - Household Size KW - Idiosyncratic Shocks KW - Income KW - Inequality KW - Labor Policies KW - Macroeconomics and Economic Growth KW - Poor KW - Poor Farmers KW - Poverty KW - Poverty Reduction KW - Risk Sharing KW - Risks KW - Rural KW - Rural Development KW - Rural Poverty Reduction KW - Rural Residents KW - Services and Transfers to Poor KW - Social Protections and Labor KW - Transfers KW - Village Leaders UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:135825939 AB - While the literature on consumption insurance is growing fast, little research has been conducted on how rural consumption insurance is affected by democracy. In this paper the authors examine how consumption insurance of Chinese rural residents is affected if the local leader is democratically elected. Exploring a unique panel data set of 1,400 households from 1987 to 2002, they find that consumption insurance is more complete when the households are in villages with elected village leaders. Furthermore, democracy improves consumption insurance only for the poor and middle-income farmers, but not for the rich. These findings underline the importance of democratic governance for ensuring better rural consumption insurance and poverty reduction. ER -