Number of Children and Female Labor Participation in China

Ke Wang; Guitao Zhang; Mengru Yu; Yangfei Gao; Yangyan Shi

doi:10.3390/ijerph19148641

Number of Children and Female Labor Participation in China

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Jul 15;19(14):8641. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19148641.

Authors

Ke Wang¹, Guitao Zhang², Mengru Yu³, Yangfei Gao⁴, Yangyan Shi⁵

Affiliations

¹ School of Statistics, Shandong University of Finance and Economics, Jinan 250220, China.
² Business School, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China.
³ The Financial Department, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing 100029, China.
⁴ School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Sciences, The University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW 2300, Australia.
⁵ Macquarie Business School, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia.

Abstract

The continuous decrease in the number of women of childbearing age and the consequent decrease in reproductive willingness have contributed to the continuous decrease in labor participation among Chinese women, which has negatively affected the stable socioeconomic development in terms of health. This paper deeply explores the intrinsic relationship between the number of children and women's labor participation based on 2016 data from China Labor-force Dynamic Survey (CLDS). Our results show that there is an "inverted U-shaped" relationship between the number of children and the rate of women's labor involvement; in other words, women's labor participation shows a trend with the increase in the number of children, first rising and then falling; meanwhile, the relationship is more pronounced among women in eastern and central regions and towns. To this end, this study provides a theoretical research basis to effectively alleviate women's selective pressure at home and work, and has a certain reference value for the Chinese government to improve women's employment environment.

Keywords: female labor involvement; number of children; “inverted U-shaped”.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Child
China
Developing Countries
Economics
Educational Status
Employment
Female
Humans
Marriage*
Social Class*
Socioeconomic Factors
Women's Rights

Grants and funding

This research was funded by The Adverse Selection Problem in China’s Medical Insurance: A Theoretical Analysis and Empirical Research, grant number. Yangyan Shi acknowledged that the grant for research on the supply of market-oriented elderly care services with involvements of financial institutions’ was supported by funding from the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.