Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/185158 
Year of Publication: 
2018
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 11698
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
This paper examines the effects of working time reduction policy on labour supply (hours of work and whether an individual takes a second job) and household production, by exploiting the Chinese Two-Day Weekend Policy, which effectively reduced weekly working days from six to five in May 1995, as a natural experiment. We construct a theoretical model that predicts a decline in labour supply in both private and public sectors as work hours were reduced. In theory, the time spent on household production may increase or decrease or the time spent on the second job may increase or decrease depending on how much agents care about household production or the income from a second job. Using the China Health and Nutrition Survey, we adopt a difference-in-differences strategy to estimate the policy effects on work hours of wage earners in both public and private sectors. Relative to the control group deemed unaffected by the policy change, our estimates show that the Two-Day Weekend Policy significantly reduced the working hours of wage earners by 4 percent and the public sector by 5 percent while increasing the probability of having a second job by 3 percent and reducing the time spent on household work by 98-107 minutes per week. The results are robust to different specifications and a propensity score matching technique.
Subjects: 
labour supply
time allocation
work hours
household production
second job
China
JEL: 
J22
J28
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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