YANG Juhua
Population Research,Vol 43,No. 01
This paper attempts to investigate the relationship between the double taxes, “gender tax” and “motherhood tax,” and female labor force participation among the population aged 18–39 in the Chinese context. Analytical results indicate that the interplay of gender, marriage and fertility bears significant impacts on these measures of work. Controlling for multiple measures of human capital and devotion to work, male and female, unmarried and married, and father and mother all differ in these regards such that females are more disadvantaged than males, and mothers are more vulnerable than women without children and all males. But the mechanisms of gender effect vary by measurements of labor market participation, and by women’s life course. Whether or not in the labor market is largely affected by gender per se and marital status, while work stability by marriage and fertility, and wage by gender and fertility. Such findings support the conceptual framework of “double-taxes.” With the relaxation of fertility policy, more women will have more than one child, which will render them to be in further disadvantaged positions in the labor market, which presents greater challenges for the government in reducing the negative effect of “double taxes” on female labor force participation.
LI Jianmin;WANG Ting;SUN Zhishuai
Population Research,Vol 42,No. 06
Using the data from China Labor-force Dynamics Survey, this paper analyzed the change of health gap between rural migrants and urban residents as well as the mechanisms causing this change in the process of rural-urban migration. By applying the logit model and Fairlie non-linear decomposition method, we have the following findings. (1) There is a health loss mechanism during the rural-urban migration process in accordance with the “epidemiological paradox.” A transition is observed from health advantage into health disadvantage for rural migrants comparing to urban residents, suggesting that rural-urban migration has a negative impact on the health conditions of rural migrants. (2) The health maintenance factor and the health loss factor are important reasons for the health gap between rural migrants and urban residents, while the health loss factor is more important. Variables such as living environment, individual income deprivation, workload, and living with spouse have great contribution to the health gap. (3) The changing trend of health conditions of male and female rural migrants is consistent with the whole sample. The relationship of the health conditions between male and female rural migrants is in line with the “gender paradox of health,” with different factors affecting the health conditions of male and female rural migrants.
GE Yuhao;ZHANG Xuemei
Population Research,Vol 43,No. 01
This paper examines the effect of housing price on family fertility decision based on the data of 2014 China Family Panel Studies. We choose housing price in the year of marriage and housing price in the fifth year of marriage as the variables influencing the decisions to have the first child and the second child respectively. We also discuss the mechanisms through which housing price affects fertility decisions by comparing families only having one house and those having two or more houses. Three main results are found in this paper. First, housing price has a significant negative effect on the probability of having children. The probability of having the first and the second child would decrease by 1.8% to 2.9% and 2.4% to 8.8% if housing price increases CNY 1000. Second, housing price postpones the age of females to have the first child. The age at first birth would increase by 0.14 to 0.26 years if housing price increases CNY 1000. Third, there are two theoretical mechanisms explaining the effect of housing price on fertility decision, namely, the crowding out effect and the wealth effect. In reality, the degree of influence from the crowding out effect is much bigger than that of the wealth effect. The results of this paper imply that decline of fertility rate in recent years is related to the rapid increase of housing price and the government needs to restrain the irrational increase of housing price.
WANG Yongmei;DU Peng
Population Research,Vol 42,No. 06
The behavioral attitudes indicate a psychological tendency of an individual towards certain behaviors and can be used to predict actual behaviors. Under the theoretical framework of multi-dimensional human nature, this study examines how the behavioral attitudes of the elderly determine their utilization of social care service by analyzing the data from six districts in Beijing. Behavioral attitudes of older persons towards social care service for the elderly consist of eight dimensions: the pursuit of an economical and practical life, the security of living and commuting, the ethic disorder of the elder care, the pressure of family care, the pursuit of spiritual effects, the identification of the elder care services, the trust on the services, and the effect of mental accounting. The low-income groups show the highest level of acceptance of social care services but also the lowest level of trust. Most of the elderly (i.e. those with secondary schooling) pay much attention to the spiritual effects of the services, while they are conservative about ethical culture of the elder care. The contingency of behavioral attitudes leads to the deviation between the utilization of services and the behaviors intentions.
LI Lei;JIANG Dianchun;WANG Xiaojie
The Journal of World Economy,Vol 41,No. 12
In view of China’s growing gender employment gap, this paper examines the relationship between entry of foreign capital, gender employment gap and enterprise exit by the use of multiple enterprise-level microeconomic databases. The results show that entry of foreign capital reduces the gender gap in employment, thus lowering the likelihood of enterprise exit. The results are robust and remain unaltered in considering sample bias, for different measurements of entry of foreign capital and domestic firms. Moreover, we demonstrate that the effects of market competition and technological progress are the underlying forces that lead to the results. This paper provides a significant referential value in formulating policies to attract foreign direct investment to China and improving labor market equality and enterprise competitiveness.
