近日，研究院刘忠教授及其指导的博士研究生周钻究撰写的“Rural centralized residences and the health of the acting heads of rural households: The case of China”一文，被《China Economic Review》接受。西南财经大学中国西部经济研究院为唯一署名单位。文章深入研究了集中居住对农村留居（代理）户主的健康影响，发现集中居住显著改善了留居（代理）户主的健康。

刘忠教授牵头的“农村集中居住”课题组现已在China Economic Review 、Growth and Change和Energy Economics上发表了有关农村集中居住的论文三篇。相关成果对下一步乡村振兴、城乡融合的政策制定有重要的参考价值。

论文摘要：The rural centralized residence (RCenR) has been adopting to promote rural development in 24 provinces in China. Acting heads of rural households are older and their health is worse than average rural residents. However, their health has greater externalities since they play a central role in families and in daily village operations. It is therefore important to investigate the causal effect of RCenR on the health of the acting heads, which remains econometrically underexplored. This study controls for cross-prefecture contiguous-villages group fixed effects and uses the expected once-off government housing subsidy as the instrumental variable to estimate the causal effect of RCenR on the health of acting heads. It is found that RCenR significantly improves acting heads' health through increased income, reduced strenuous agricultural activities, greater use of clean energy and clean water, as well as easier access to local medical services. These findings are important because they can guide developing countries to improve their rural development policies.