The effects of formal and informal child care on the Mother's labor supply—Evidence from urban China

The women's labor force participation rate in China has declined considerably during the last twenty years in urban China. Since the reforms started in the mid-1990s, publicly subsidized child care programs have decreased, and private care centers have increased. This might have increased the reliance of working mothers on informal child care and reduced their reliance on formal child care. Using post-reform data from the Project on Rural–Urban Migration in China (RUMiC) of 2008, I estimate the effects of formal and informal child care on the labor supply of mothers of young children. A recursive model with instrumental variables is employed to account for endogeneity. I find a positive and significant impact of informal child care in the form of grandchild care on the mother's labor force participation, while no significant effect of formal child care in the form of kindergartens or paid nannies. Considering recent tendencies in China to postpone retirement, one possible method to maintain mothers' presence in the labor market could be to reinforce the availability and affordability of formal child care.²³     

Unemployment and labor force participation in urban China

This paper serves to document and analyze the employment and the labor market changes in urban China since the late 1980s. High and sustained GDP growth rates in China have paradoxically been accompanied by increasing unemployment rates and decreasing labor force participation rates. Using national representative micro data, estimations from logit models show that age, education, communist-party membership and marital status are significantly associated with participation in the labor force and employment opportunities, and the impacts of education and party membership have increased over time. An extension of the Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition finds little of the observed male–female differentials attributable to differences in characteristics such as age or education but to coefficient effects, a possible reflection of discrimination.     

The effect of universal pre-kindergarten policy on female labor force participation—A synthetic control approach

This paper examines the effect of universal pre-kindergarten (pre-k) on the labor force participation of mothers with pre-k-aged children in Oklahoma and Georgia. I apply the synthetic control method (SCM) to Current Population Survey (CPS) data to identify the causal relationship between universal pre-k and female labor market outcomes. I find that the universal pre-k policy has a positive impact on the intensive margin of the labor supply of mothers with pre-k-aged children in Georgia, which provides full-day child care services for all pre-k programs. However, Oklahoma's universal pre-k policy has little effect on the labor outcomes of mothers with 4-year-old children. The empirical results also suggest that universal pre-k has heterogeneous impacts on subsamples stratified by education level, marital status, poverty status, and the age structure of children in the household.     

照看子女、劳动参与和灵活就业:中国女性如何平衡家庭与工作

文章利用中国家庭收入调查2007和2008年数据研究了未成年子女对女性劳动参与和职业选择的影响。研究结果表明，家中有未成年子女显著降低了女性工作的可能性，提升了工作女性选择灵活就业的可能性；学龄前子女更有可能导致女性退出劳动力市场，而6-14岁子女更有可能导致女性选择灵活就业；不工作和选择灵活就业使女性更有可能成为学龄前子女的主要照顾者，但灵活就业并没有减少女性的工作时间；女性获得工作灵活性的代价是工资水平显著下降。上述结论在解决了女性劳动参与、职业选择和生育决策的内生性问题之后依然是稳健的。文章的结论对"全面二孩"政策背景保障女性就业有一定借鉴意义。     

Import competition and the gender gap in labor force participation: Evidence from China

Does import competition explain the gender gap in labor force participation? The distributional consequences of trade liberalization have fascinated decades of economists and policy makers. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that import competition enlarges the gender gap in labor force participation in China during 1990 and 2005. The results are robust to various identification challenges, including contemporaneous confounders, treatment effect heterogeneity, and spatial correlations in standard errors. The magnitude of the gender-differential effects of import competition on labor force participation grows by age, and peaks for people aged 46–50. The household division of labor appears to explain the gender-differential effects. Import competition also leads to a relative contraction of female-intensive industries, and reduces the share of female employees in each industry.     

Women hold up half the sky? Gender identity and the wife's labor market performance in China

In this paper, we empirically study the impact of gender identity on the wife's labor supply in China where a high female employment rate and a large population that has a traditional gender identity coexist. We find that the wife's gender identity affects her labor force participation for all cohorts, and the wife's gender identity affects earnings only for rural cohorts. The impact of gender identity varies among generational, regional, and educational cohorts. Husbands still guide their wives, i.e., a husband's gender identity affects his wife's labor force participation and earnings.     

What accounts for the decline in labor force participation among married women in urban China, 1991–2011?

Since the advent of Communist movement in the 1940s, women in China have been portrayed as equal partners to men in their labor force participation, operating under slogans such as “Women hold up half the sky”. Political rhetoric in the Mao era suggested that gender parity could be attained through women's participation in paid employment and full time work outside the home became routine for most urban women. Subsequent to the reforms, however, China has experienced a sharp decline in urban women's labor force participation. Utilizing micro-level data spanning from 1991 to 2011, individual women's labor force decisions are analyzed in order to identify the reasons for the decline. Changes in covariates explain only a small portion of the observed decline. However, over the study interval the wage returns to education increased markedly, and the distribution of wages widened considerably. These factors, combined with a high wage elasticity of participation, are consistent with the pattern of declining labor force participation found in the data. As such, promotion of women's education, particularly at the upper secondary level and beyond, could be expected to offset the downward trend.     

Labor force competition and the black-white wage gap

Have the increasing numbers of women and immigrants in the U.S. labor force adversely affected the relative earnings of black men? A recent article in this journal argued that they have, based on empirical analysis of 1970 census data. The present study begins with a critique of both the theoretical assumptions and the empirical methods of this earlier article. A regression analysis of 1980 census data is then undertaken, which indicates that recent immigration has not had a negative impact on the relative wages of central-city black men. The findings also suggest that while higher rates of female labor force participation are statistically associated with lower black-white wage ratios, this effect is limited to teenagers.     

Divorce and female labor force participation: Evidence from times-series data and cointegration

The divorce rate in the United States has increased over the last 40 years. This increase was accompanied both by growing female labor force participation and rising female income. These changes were accompanied by a significant reduction in the birth rate for married women. This article uses time-series data and cointegration techniques to determine the direction of causality between these variables. Analysis of the impulse functions show that the divorce rate will increase if either female labor force participation or income increases. Positive innovations to the divorce rate increase the labor force participation rate of married women. Rising levels of income lead to greater female participation in the labor market.     

The effect of public sector employment on the earnings of white and African American males: A sample selectivity approach

This research note uses a sample selection model to measure the earnings premium (or penalty) to public sector employment. A model correcting for both labor force participation and sectoral choice is estimated for both white and African American males. Results indicate that African American males are no better off in the public than in the private sector. Moreover, white males employed in the public sector earn significantly less than their private sector counterparts.     

Illicit Drug Use,Employment, and Labor Force Participation

Illicit drug use has declined among the U.S. adult population, but national surveys show the majority of illicit drug users are employed. Concern about workplace productivity, absenteeism, and safety has led many employers to establish employee assistance and drug testing programs. Given the sharp interest in workplace interventions, more information is needed about the relationships between drug use and labor market status. This study estimated the probability of employment and labor force participation for different types of drug users using nationally representative data from the 1997 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. Results strongly indicated that chronic drug use was significantly related (negative) to employment for both genders and labor force participation for males. Furthermore, nonchronic drug use was not significantly related to employment or labor force participation. These findings suggest that workplace policies for illicit drug use should consider chronic or problem drug users apart from light or casual users.     

The link between unemployment and labor force participation rates in Japan: A regional perspective

This paper explores the co-integrating relationship between unemployment and the labor force participation rate in Japan from a regional perspective. The univariate co-integration tests indicate that the “no co-integration” hypothesis cannot be rejected in Northern-Kanto, Hokuriku and Kyusyu. Because the univariate co-integration approach might suffer from low power we employed a panel version of the co-integration test recently developed by Westerlund (2006) that also considers the possibility of multiple structural breaks in the level of individual co-integrating equations. The test results lend support for an overwhelmingly long-run relationship between the two variables across regions. Accordingly, this finding is not in line with the unemployment invariance hypothesis. As a result a nationally orientated employment policy aimed at improving the unemployment and labor force participation rates might be preferred over a region-specific employment policy in Japan.     

劳动力市场的新趋势与养老保险制度的完善

自20世纪90年代末以来,随着经济体制改革的推进和社会的发展变迁,我国劳动力市场出现劳动参与率下降、灵活就业形式越来越普遍的现象,并且人口老龄化日益显现,未来劳动力供给可能减少,劳动力市场的这些新趋势将给养老保险制度带来挑战,本文拟对此进行分析,并在此基础上对养老保险制度的完善提出对策建议。     

政府推动的就近城镇化能够消除工资歧视吗

随着大中城市城镇化空间的逐渐饱和以及农民工回流现象的出现,就近城镇化成为推进我国新型城镇化进程的重要模式。文章基于2017年中国流动人口动态监测调查(CMDS)数据,研究政府推动的就近城镇化对农村劳动力工资收入的影响发现:政府通过征地、户口改革方式推动的就近城镇化并不能够消除工资歧视,实现就近城镇化的农村劳动力在其他条件相同的情况下其工资水平仍然低于城镇本地职工,这一结论在纠正自选择偏差和样本选择偏差后仍然成立。机制分析发现,城镇劳动力市场针对实现就近城镇化的农村劳动力在就业机会方面的歧视与隔离已不明显,同工不同酬成为实现就近城镇化者面临的主要歧视形式,而城乡劳动力之间教育回报率的差异是导致同工不同酬的主要原因。进一步讨论发现,就近城镇化对于农村劳动力参保城镇职工保险具有显著的提升作用,而自我雇佣的就业形式则有助于打破城镇劳动力市场对农村劳动力的收入歧视。文章拓展研究了就近城镇化对农村劳动力工资收入的影响,为政府进一步推进以县域城镇化为主要形式的就近城镇化提供了研究参考。未来应持续推进城乡基本公共服务均等化,进一步缩小城乡教育质量差异,加强农村劳动力"同工同酬"的保护力度,稳步推进农村劳动力的就近城镇化。     

Relative wage, child labor, and human capital

This paper analyses child labor and children's human capitalformation in response to the changes of the relative wage/productivitybetween child labor and adult labor. It implies that becausechildren's labor market participation raises the financial resourcesspent on their education, a small increase in child labor mayenhance children's human capital. It also shows that in a pooreconomy, the laws that punish or partially deter child labormay result in children working more and accumulating less humancapital.     

新疆劳动参与率实证研究

本文通过获取历年统计年鉴数据,对新疆和全国劳动参与率的比较得出以下结论：一是与全国劳动参与率相比,新疆地区劳动参与率明显偏低;二是全国劳动参与率处于下降趋势,新疆地区劳动参与率缓慢增加。在此基础上,对此产生的原因作了简要分析。除宏观经济因素外,还与新疆地区特有的文化思维观念有关：人们生活小富则安,缺少竞争观念,以及新疆地区推行特殊的计划生育政策,从而导致高幼儿抚养比。     

The Implicit Costs of Motherhood over the Lifecycle: Cross-Cohort Evidence from Administrative Longitudinal Data

It is well known that the explicit costs of raising a child have grown over the past several decades. Less well understood are the implicit costs of having a child, and how they have changed over time. In this article, we are the first to examine the evolution of the implicit costs of motherhood over the lifecycle and across generations using high quality administrative data. We estimate that the lifetime labor market income gap between mothers and women who never have children (never-mothers) decreases from around $350,000 to $280,000 between women born in the late 1940s and late 1960s. Gaps tend to increase monotonically over the lifecycle, and decrease monotonically between cohorts. Our evidence suggests that changes in the gaps are caused by changing labor force participation rates.     

Women's labor force participation and marriage: The case of Korea

In this paper, we examine the relationship between marital status and female labor force participation in Korea, and argue that marriage remains a major obstacle to young Korean women's employment. We find that an average married woman is much less likely (by 40–60%) to participate in the labor force than a single woman in urban Korea. Further investigation into the participation patterns among married women reveals that labor force participation rate (LFPR) varies with husband's occupation and her own age. Lower LFPR among the young married women is explained by demand-side factors, while relatively higher LFPR among the middle-aged married women is mostly explained by the supply-side factors.     

Demographic consequences of maternal-leave programs in industrial countries: evidence from fixed-effects models

The authors measure the effects of paid maternity leave upon infant mortality, the labor force participation of women during their prime childbearing years, and fertility rates. To reach their conclusions, they constructed a simultaneous-equations model using the individual fixed-effects method and a data set comprising 17 OECD countries and four time periods. The extension of maternal leave programs, measured in terms of duration of paid leave, is shown to reduce infant mortality, to raise rates of labor force participation for women in the prime childbearing ages, and to increase birth rates. The direct plus indirect impacts of extending maternity leave programs, as revealed by the reduced-form parameters of the authors' models, however, produce a different picture. The total impacts upon both infant mortality and female labor force participation conform closely to the structural estimates, but the impact upon birth rates almost disappears. It seems that the indirect effects of the maternal leave variable, via infant mortality and women's labor force participation, offset the directly pronatal influence. From a policy perspective, the benefits of paid maternal leave programs would seem to be unconditionally positive with respect to lowering infant mortality, and also positive with respect to raising female labor force participation. One should not, however, expect higher birth rates from such programs. The findings also suggest that maternal leave programs can facilitate some increases in women's labor force participation without incurring the reductions in fertility which would otherwise be experienced.     

Marginalization Revisited: Women's Market Work and Pay,and Economic Development

A substantial literature argues that women have been left out of economic development, but evidence from labor force surveys in middle-income developing countries suggests otherwise. Women's participation rates in the market labor force have been increasing, women have shifted into white-collar occupations, and certain previously male-dominated occupations have become female-dominated (clerical work in Asia, for example). Women's relative pay has risen somewhat faster in Asia and Latin America than occurred during industrialization in the United States. Although inequalities remain, there is no evidence that women on average are being marginalized.