Economic Reforms and Their Effects on Household Patterns of Tibetan Nomads

China's economic reforms since the 1980s, known in rural China as the "household responsibility system," have shifted communities away from collectivization and toward entrepreneurship and privatization. These reforms have led to major changes for rural Chinese families involving household composition, marriage arrangements, and childbearing (Davis and Harrell 1993, 1-22). Local variations in culture and economy have also influenced those transformations in specific ways (Levine 1994; Gladney 1991). The impact on the family system has not been uniform, therefore; rather, there have been distinct consequences in different areas.