Marriage and Employment in China: Labor Force Participation across an Era of Economic Reform

• In Event: 115 - Section on Asia and Asian America Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 10. The Sociology of Gender and Work across Asia and Asian America

Abstract

This paper examines the effects of marriage and its duration on Chinese women’s labor market participation in the formal and informal sectors between 1991 and 2011. It focuses on how the interactions among gender, market, family and the state are embedded within the employment decisions of Chinese women. Using data from eight waves of China Health and Nutrition Survey, I specify binary and multinomial logit model for the analysis. Findings suggest that marriage has a negative effect on Chinese women’s labor force participation only in a short period of time after marriage occurs. Marriage does not have significant effect on women’s employment decisions between formal and informal sectors. Negative marriage effect tends to attenuate within few years of marriage, replacing by a stronger negative motherhood effect which squeezing women out of the formal economy. I find an increasing, significant and negative period effect on Chinese women’s labor force participation and formal employment.

Author

• Bin Lian, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign