Childcare, Eldercare, and Labor Force Participation of Married Women in Urban China: 1982-2000
46 Pages Posted: 14 Jun 2009
Abstract
We employ data from the three most recent Chinese population censuses to consider married, urban women's labor force participation decisions in the context of their families and their residential locations. We are particularly interested in how the presence in the household of preschool and school-age children and/or the elderly and disabled affects women's likelihood of engaging in work outside the home. We find that the presence of older people in the household (any parent or parent-in-law and any person aged 75 or older) significantly increases prime-age urban women's likelihood of participating in market work and that presence of pre-school age children significantly decreases it. The negative effect on women's labor force participation of having young children in the household (compared to no children in the household) is substantially larger in magnitude for married, migrant women than for married, non-migrant urban residents. This appears to be explained, in part, by the practice of married, female migrants leaving their children in the care of relatives in rural areas in order to facilitate their employment.
Keywords: labor force participation, China, childcare, eldercare, migrants, population census, urban women
JEL Classification: J11, J12, J13, J16, J22, O15, P23, R23
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
The Effects of Market Liberalization on the Relative Earnings of Chinese Women
-
Earnings Differentials between State and Non-State Enterprises in Urban China
By Yaohui Zhao
-
Economic Transition, Gender Bias, and the Distribution of Earnings in China
By John A. Bishop, Feijun Luo, ...
-
Economic Returns to Communist Party Membership: Evidence from Urban Chinese Twins
By Hongbin Li, Pak Wai Liu, ...
-
Differential Rewards to, and Contributions of, Education in Urban China's Segmented Labor Markets
By Margaret Maurer-fazio and Ngan Dinh
-
Earnings Differentials and Ownership Structure in Chinese Enterprises
By Yi Chen, Sylvie Démurger, ...
-
Effects of Marriage, Education and Occupation on the Female/Male Wage Gap in China
-
Gender Earnings Differentials and Regional Economic Development in Urban China, 1988-97
By Ying Chu Ng
-
Migrants as Second-Class Workers in Urban China? A Decomposition Analysis
By Sylvie Démurger, Marc Gurgand, ...
