Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/35543 
Year of Publication: 
2009
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 4204
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
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.
Subjects: 
Labor force participation
China
childcare
eldercare
migrants
population census
urban women
JEL: 
J11
J12
J13
J16
J22
O15
P23
R23
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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