Childcare, Eldercare, and Labor Force Participation of Urban Women in China: 1982-2000

We employ data from the three most recent Chinese population censuses to consider 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 women in the household significantly increases prime-age women’s likelihood of participating in market work and that presence of pre-school age children significantly decreases it. Never married, divorced, and widowed women are all more likely to participate in the labor force than married women and the effect of marital status has increased quite substantially over time. Each of these effects is much larger in magnitude for migrant women than for non-migrant urban residents.

[1]  Dandan Zhang,et al.  An Ocean formed from one hundred rivers: the effects of ethnicity, gender, marriage, and location on labor force participation in urban China , 2007 .

[2]  R. Mu,et al.  Elderly parent health and the migration decisions of adult children: Evidence from rural China , 2007, Demography.

[3]  Hong Zhang.  Who Will Care for Our Parents? Changing Boundaries of Family and Public Roles in Providing Care for the Aged in Urban China , 2007, Care Management Journals.

[4]  Xin Meng,et al.  How Well Do Children Insure Parents Against Low Retirement Income? An Analysis Using Survey Data from Urban China , 2006 .

[5]  Hong Zhang.  Family Care or Residential Care? The Moral and Practical Dilemmas Facing the Elderly in Urban China , 2006 .

[6]  James W. Hughes,et al.  Economic Reform and Changing Patterns of Labor Force Participation in Urban and Rural China , 2005 .

[7]  A. Pollert.  Gender, Transformation and Employment in Central Eastern Europe , 2005 .

[8]  Hong Zhang.  Bracing for an Uncertain Future: A Case Study of New Coping Strategies of Rural Parents under China's Birth Control Policy , 2005, The China Journal.

[9]  N. Riley.  China's Population: New Trends and Challenges , 2004 .

[10]  A. Park,et al.  How has Economic Restructuring Affected China's Urban Workers? , 2003, The China Quarterly.

[11]  J. Vaupel,et al.  Sociodemographic and Health Profiles of the Oldest Old In China , 2002 .

[12]  B. Entwisle,et al.  Re-drawing boundaries : work, households, and gender in China , 2002 .

[13]  M. Palmer.  The Re-emergence of Family Law in Post-Mao China: Marriage, Divorce and Reproduction , 1995, The China Quarterly.

[14]  Xin Meng,et al.  What Determines Living Arrangements of the Elderly in Urban China , 2008 .

[15]  T. Jacka.  Rural women in urban China : gender, migration, and social change , 2005 .

[16]  Wang Meiyan,et al.  Should I Be out, or Should I Be in? Labor Force Participation in Transitional Urban China , 2004 .

[17]  Zeng Yi,et al.  Dynamics of Family and Elderly Living Arrangements in China: New Lessons Learned from the , 2003 .

[18]  E. Croll.  Changing identities of Chinese women : rhetoric, experience, and self-perception in twentieth-century China , 1995 .