Unpaid Care Work's Interference with Paid Work and the Gender Earnings Gap in China

This paper examines the effects of unpaid care work on the earnings of men and women in China by using data from the 2008 China Time Use Survey, the country's first, large-scale time-use survey. The study introduces three indicators to measure the degree to which unpaid care work may “interfere” with paid work, either by directly disrupting it or by being intertwined with it. The regression estimates show that while the amount of time spent on unpaid care work negatively affects the earnings of both men and women, the interference of unpaid work with paid work lowers earnings more for women than for men. Quantitatively, the gender differences in the time spent on unpaid care work and its interference with paid work account for 28 percent of the gender earnings gap in China.     

Gender Patterns and Value of Unpaid Care Work: Findings From China's First Large‐Scale Time Use Survey

Using data from the 2008 China Time Use Survey, this paper examines the gender patterns of time allocation over paid work, unpaid care work, and non‐work activity and estimates the monetary value of unpaid care work. A seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) technique is applied to explore the tradeoff between the three types of activity. The estimates show that, holding constant individual characteristics and regional effects, the total work time of women is higher than that of men by 7 hours per week in the rural sector and by 10.5 hours per week in the urban sector. The monetary value of unpaid care work is estimated by five methods. Depending on the method used, the value assigned to unpaid care work varies from 25 to 32 percent of China's GDP, from 52 to 66 percent of final consumption, and from 63 to 80 percent of the gross products of tertiary industry.     

Gender,Work Burden,and Mental Health in Post-Reform China

ABSTRACT

This study investigates how total work burden, including paid work and unpaid care work, affects the mental health of prime-age, employed women and men in urban China. Based on the 2010 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), regression results indicate that total work burden is negatively related to the mental health of both men and women, consistent with the idea that additional work hours reduce time available for rest and leisure. Women have longer working hours and are more likely to be time poor than men, and this gender inequality in total work burden contributes to the gender gap in mental health. The relationships between the components of total work burden – paid and unpaid work – and mental health shed further light on the strength of gender norms and the barriers to redistribution of unpaid work from women to men necessary to reduce the gender gap in mental health.     

Counting Care Work in Social Policy: Valuing Unpaid Child- and Eldercare in Korea

This study demonstrates the usefulness of quantifying and valuing time spent on unpaid care work and explores the links between social policies, unpaid care work, and gender equality in the context of recent social care reforms in the Republic of Korea. Using information provided by two nationally representative surveys, this article elaborates on the gendered organization of care provision and the total costs of care services for children and the elderly, including unpaid family care, family expenditures on care services, and state support in the form of public expenditures. The study finds that omitting the role of family care services overestimates the state's role in caring for children and elderly adults. A closer look at the impact of long-term care insurance reveals the need for integrated analyses of the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the social organization of care, especially in regard to gender equality.     

Hidden in Plain Sight: Unpaid Household Services and the Politics of GDP Measurement

ABSTRACT

Gross domestic product (GDP) is one of the world’s most influential and widely cited economic indicators. However, outside of the industrialised, market-based context in which the indicator was first designed, GDP measurement suffers from a number of biases and blind spots. The article zooms in on one of these: the exclusion of unpaid household services from the production boundary of the System of National Accounts, the international standard underpinning GDP methodology. While GDP has expanded over time to include activities as diverse as financial services and the informal sector, the treatment of unpaid household services has remained unchanged. Why is this? I find that staff in the statistical departments of international organisations such the United Nations, International Monetary Fund and World Bank have a tremendous degree of agency in the governance of GDP. While these statisticians are aware of and engage with criticisms, they reject the inclusion of unpaid household services based on shared professional norms and economic ideas.     

The Monetized Economy Versus Care and the Environment: Degrowth Perspectives On Reconciling an Antagonism

This paper addresses the question of how the current growth paradigm perpetuates existing gender and environmental injustices and investigates whether these can be mitigated through a degrowth work-sharing proposal. It uses an adapted framework of the “ICE model” to illustrate how ecological processes and caring activities are structurally devalued by the monetized economy in a growth paradigm. On the one hand, this paradigm perpetuates gender injustices by reinforcing dualisms and devaluing care. On the other hand, environmental injustices are perpetuated since “green growth” does not succeed in dematerializing production processes. In its critique of the growth imperative, degrowth not only promotes the alleviation of environmental injustices but also calls for a recentering of society around care. This paper concludes that, if designed in a gender-sensitive way, a degrowth work-sharing proposal as part of a broader value transformation has the potential to address both gender and environmental injustices.     

Gender,Low-Paid Status,and Time Poverty in Urban China

ABSTRACT

Using synthetic data from the 2008 China Time Use Survey (CTUS) and the 2008 China Household Income Project (CHIP), this study estimates time-poverty rates and compares the profiles of time-poor men and women workers in urban China. In line with previous research, time poverty is defined as a lack of enough time for rest and leisure. Three time-poverty measures are adopted. By all three measures, women paid workers and low-paid workers account for a disproportionate share of the time poor. Regression analysis further shows that, other things being equal, workers who are women, low-paid, married, and who live with children or the elderly in counties with higher overtime rates and lower minimum wage standards are more likely to be time poor. Simulations indicate that enforcing working time regulations and raising minimum wage standards could be effective for reducing time poverty.     

Women's Paid Work and Intimate Partner Violence: Insights from Tanzania

Theoretical and empirical research provide conflicting views on whether women who do paid work are less at risk from violence by an intimate partner in low- and middle-income countries. Economic household-bargaining models propose increased access to monetary resources will enhance women's “agency” and hence their bargaining power within the household, which reduces their vulnerability to intimate-partner violence. Feminist theorists also argue, however, that culture, context, and social norms can impede women's ability to access and benefit from employment. This study uses semi-structured interviews conducted in 2009 to explore the implications of paid work among women market traders in Dar es Salaam and Mbeya, Tanzania. While in this sample, informal-sector work did not result in women being able to fully exercise agency, their access to money did have a positive effect on their lives and reduced one major source of conflict and trigger for violence: that of negotiating money from men.     

Men,Women, Money,and Morality: The Development of China's Sexual Economy

This paper focuses on men and women engaged in China's sexual economy, which is dominated by the exchange between wealthy and politically influential men and unmarried young women who trade their femininity and sexuality for material wealth and financial security from these men. Drawing on analyses of the popular 2009 television serial, Woju (Dwelling Narrowness), coupled with recent ethnographic studies, the paper shows how this sexual economy thrives in the increasingly competitive and commercial urban landscape of present-day China. The study then examines the impact of commodification and materialism on men and women. The paper places these gender dynamics within the context of socioeconomic changes during the last thirty years and investigates how gender inequality became assimilated into both official and popular discourses of Chinese life, thereby facilitating the ascendancy and power of the sexual economy.     

Household Social Mobility for Paid Domestic Workers and Other Low-Skilled Women Employed in South Africa

This paper explores the theme of patronage by examining how the social mobility prospects of paid domestic workers differ from other vulnerable low-skilled black and colored women in post-apartheid South Africa. The literature provides contradictory predictions about the effects of a relationship with an affluent employer on a vulnerable employed woman and her household. Using data from the 2002–8 General Household Survey, this study uses propensity score matching (PSM) to compare paid domestic workers versus employed women with similar labor market characteristics. It finds that the household members of paid domestic workers tend to have a lower likelihood of unemployment, lower unemployment duration, higher likelihood of owning assets, and lower prevalence of hunger. It is, however, important to see evidence of such benefits in the context of a complicated employment relationship and to highlight that such benefits can reflect both altruistic and self-serving employer motivations.     

税负水平对中国投资、创业和就业的影响

鼓励私人投资和创业活动是改善民生的重要举措之一,对建立微型和中小企业、扩大就业途径和增加就业具有极其重要约作用。然而,和国际上许多国家相比,中国投资在创业约税费负担明显偏重,这种情况不利于私人投资、创业和就业,严重制约了中小企业的建立和发展,也不利于中国经济稳定增长。政府要通过制定合理的税负水平,取消各种乱收费和罚款,给投资、创业和就业创造一个宽松的社会环境。     

Child Schooling and Work Decisions in India: The Role of Household and Regional Gender Equity

Abstract

This paper tests three hypotheses about how mothers' autonomy in India affects their children's participation in school and the labor market. To do so it extends the concept of mothers' autonomy beyond the household to include the constraints imposed by the extent of gender equity in the regions in which these women live. This study began with the expectation that increased autonomy for Indian mothers living in heterosexual households would increase child schooling and decrease child work. However, the results are mixed, indicating that mother's autonomy can be reinforced or constrained by the environment. The paper concludes that mothers and fathers in India make different decisions for girls vis-à-vis boys and that the variables reflecting mothers' autonomy vary in their impact, so that mothers' level of education relative to fathers' is not often statistically significant, while mothers' increased contributions to household expenditure decrease the probability of schooling and girls' work.     

Gender Gaps in Unpaid Domestic and Care Work: Putting The Pandemic in (a Life Course) Perspective

Our paper examines  trends in gender inequalities in unpaid domestic and care work over the short- and long-term in Australia, including assessing the impact of the COVID-19 lockdowns. We use the concept of time—historical, biographical and transitional—as a framework for our analyses. Drawing on data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, we find wide and continuing gender gaps in unpaid work over the past two decades. We demonstrate that parenthood is a far greater producer and exacerbator of gender inequalities in unpaid domestic and care work than COVID-19 lockdowns.     

“知识分子负担”与家务劳动——劳心与劳力、性别与阶级之一

20世纪80年代关于“知识分子负担”的讨论凸显了脑力劳动（业务工作）和体力劳动（家务劳动）的矛盾,使家务劳动的问题成为一个阶层的特有负担,而遮蔽了性别的问题。重读80年代的小说《人到中年》可以读出以下问题：家务劳动在话语上怎样变成了一种负担？陆文婷为什么只能代表知识分子,而不是女性？谁是家务劳动理想的、合适的承担者？“知识分子负担”的话语如何为保姆进城搭台？对小部分家庭而言,雇佣家务劳动是用阶级的关系“解决”家务劳动中性别分工的问题和家务劳动社会化不足的问题。社会主流对家务劳动的定位、认识和处理反映出改革时代的现代化进程中,脑体、城乡和男女这三组社会差别的重构。     

再生产抑或循环:女性的职业阶层不平等与社会流动研究

当前我国社会职业阶层结构的开放对于男性和女性有着不同的意义,代际和代内社会职业阶层流动表明,女性的总流动率和上升流动率均低于男性,女性更多地受到父代尤其是母亲职业地位的影响,而男性则更容易通过自身努力从较低的社会职业阶层跻身到职业地位的上层。由此我们可以理解尽管社会流动率在增加,但是女性与男性的社会地位仍存在着较大的差距。     

The Consequences of Having a Son on Family Wealth in Urban China

Due to the influence of traditional culture, housing is regarded as a status good and plays an important role in improving male competitiveness in the marriage market in China. Using data from a recent household survey, we find that urban families with a son are more likely to own a house, with a larger size, and at an earlier date. With the booming of the Chinese housing market since the late 1990s as background, having a son thus generates a substantial effect on family wealth through the channel of house ownership. Using the gender of the first‐born child as an instrument, our estimation shows that families with a son have 188 thousand RMB yuan higher housing wealth on average.     

Welfare as We [Don't] Know It: A Review and Feminist Critique of Welfare Reform Research in the United States

Reform of the United States welfare system in 1996 drastically changed welfare receipt for low-income lone mothers. This paper explores the effects of these changes on lone mothers by summarizing empirical work on caseload reduction, labor force participation, income, poverty, material hardship, and family formation. While it appears that the economic status of many lone mothers improved during the economic expansion in the late 1990s, many lone mothers continued to experience poverty and material hardship. Building on the work of feminist scholars from both the US and other countries, this paper goes on to critique mainstream research on welfare reform. It identifies a particularly feminist approach to welfare reform research, stresses its advantages over mainstream research, and speculates about why there is comparatively less feminist research to date. The paper concludes by calling for more structural analyses of poverty and of lone motherhood itself.     

世界经济周期演化特征及其对中国经济的非对称性影响:基于多国经济周期框架下的实证研究

本文采用带马尔科夫区制转换的VECM模型在多国经济框架下有效地识别和分析了从1991年至2008年世界经济周期的演化特征,进而研究了世界经济周期演化对中国经济的非对称影响。实证结果显示,世界经济在"经济增长"阶段的持续性要强于"经济衰退"阶段,世界经济由"经济衰退"转向"经济增长"的概率为0.34,而由"经济增长"向"经济衰退"转换的概率为0.16。世界经济周期的转换一般是在一个季度以后,对中国经济的影响程度最深,进而经过七个季度后影响逐渐消失;对此,当期中国经济增长率将做出不同程度的反应,如果世界经济是由"经济增长"向"经济衰退"阶段转换时,那么中国经济增长率将下降0.1个百分点。同时本文还发现,中国经济与世界经济的联系主要依靠贸易渠道,而且中国经济对各国经济冲击的反应普遍存在着非对称性。最后,本文提出了相应的政策启示。     

Ecology,Sustainability, and Care: Developments in the Field

Over the past three decades, scholars and activists have been attempting to enrich the field of economics with both feminist and ecological perspectives. This essay reviews some highlights of such efforts, describes the current state of the field (particularly in regard to notions of “care”), and introduces a short symposium.     

The effects of transition on the distribution of income in China

Using two large samples for 1988 and 1995 we decompose the Gini coefficient of household income according to type of income with the purpose of analyzing reasons for the rapid increase of inequality. The results show that the change in relative size of money income and its changed profile are found to be the major processes behind the rapid increase of income inequality in rural China. Changes in housing allocation and an increased number of retirees in combination with higher benefits have made inequality increase in urban China and in China as a whole. JEL classification: D31, P27.