Economic Analyses Of Women's Options And Their Labor Force Participation Decisions

Labor force participation rate, as unemployment rate, is an important employment indicator. Since China began to open up in the late 1970s, there has been a spectacular decrease in Chinese urban women's labor participation rate. Now the gender inequality in labor market has become a focal social problem. By foreign studies the women's labor participation problem is a very complex problem, not only do marriage, family, education and fertility etc. affect women's labor force participation decisions, but any important innovation and large shock in the society and economy, for example, technological improvement and war, may deeply influence women's decisions. But by now the worrying decrease of Chinese urban women's labor participation rate has only been explained as a result of Chinese institution change and high unemployment rate. It's apparent that this kind of explanation is not convincing. So as to correctly assess Chinese urban women's employment situation and make proper policies to enhance women's welfare benefits, it is necessary to continuously study this striking fall in Chinese urban women's labor participation rate.It is a key assumption on the study of women labor force participation decisions that women have options whether to take part in market work or non-market work. Labor force participation decisions are an important aspect of the general decision problem that a family allocates time in a competitive market economy. A married woman must allocate her time between market work and household work, leisure etc. non-market work. But modern woman movements overly demand women to go out from home to seek their social status, pay little attention to women's options, and make marital relation be a modern social puzzle. And so in this paper, I apply economic methods and make great efforts to demonstrate the importance of women's options.There are ten chapters in the paper organized in the following way: From the first to fourth chapter, a proper gender conception has be established with the help of general equilibrium and welfare economic theory and on the basis of reviewing a large of literature on marriage, family and women's social status. From fifth to tenth chapter, I have developed a model that describes Chinese unemployed women's labor force participation decisions on the basis of Recursive Macroeconomics and Dynamic Program, established a formula calculating women's labor force participation rate, studied the impacts of education and fertility on women's labor force participation rate.Chapter one Marriage and Family: in the first section on marriage, family and gender; in the second section on marriage market and match; in the third section on family structure and ideal family model; in the fourth section on Chinese women's role in family; in the fifth section on household work; in the sixth section on gender conceptions in modern societies. Chapter two On the valuation of household works and the construction of gender-equal and harmonious societies: The goal of traditional gender conception is to maintain family and marital relationships stable at the cost of women's happiness and freedom. The modern feminist's gender conception is to fight for women's freedom, but it makes maintaining marital relationships harmonious become a subtle problem that modern societies are confronted with. And so, this conception is not only difficult to work for the happiness of women, but against harmonious man-woman co-existence. By applying the equilibrium method of the modern economics this paper develops a mathematical model to establish a gender conception that cannot only work for women's happiness and freedom, but can maintain family and marital relationships harmonious. This conception stresses the value of household work, marital freedom and men and women's options to do household works and market labors. And so this paper has criticized the traditional gender discrimination conception and made up for the shortage of the modern feminist's gender conception. This paper demonstrates that in the competitive market condition the ideal, that women are happy and free, family and marital relationships are stable and harmony, can be realized.Chapter three Women's Status: in the first section on gender inequality in traditional societies; in the second section on gender inequality in modern societies; in the third section on women's status dreamed by women movements.In Chapter four, this paper applies welfare economics to study the status of women, makes up for the shortage that domestic and foreign scholars do not pay enough attentions to women's preferences and options when they study the status of women; demonstrates that women's status and welfare are not identical; illustrates that if let women to have options, then it is benefit to relaxing the pressure on unstable family relationships that the modern societies are confronted with.Chapter five Women's Labor Force Participation Situation: in the first section some basic conceptions are defined; in the second section on the differences among Chinese, Japanese and Korean women's labor force participation situations; in the third section on American women's labor force participation situations after the Great Depression; in the fourth section on Chinese labor force participation situations.In the chapter six, this paper develops a model of unemployed women's labor force participation decisions on the reality of China, derives women's labor force participation rate by aggregation. It is showed that under other conditions unchanged, women's labor force participation rate is an increasing function of unemployed rate and market price of household work, is a decreasing function of opportunity cost; as women's bargaining power rises, this rate decreases.Chapter seven Women's Education: in the first section on the conception of women's education; in the second section on the effects of women's education; in the third section on Chinese women's education states; in the fourth section on American women's education states; in the fifth section on the relationship of women's education and their independent entities.In the chapter eight, this paper studies the relationship between women's education and their labor force participation rate, theoretically illustrates that the impacts of education is complex, women's labor force participation rate is not certainly an increasing function of women's education level. In one hand, education can increase women's wage and expected time of work, make their health better, and so under other conditions unchanged, education increases women's labor force participation rate. But in another hand, women's education level increases their bargaining power in their marital life. Generally this bargaining power makes them enjoy themselves in their family life and tend not to take part in market work.Chapter nine Fertility: in the first section on fertility tendency; in the second section on fertility civilization; in the third section on demographic change; in the fourth section on important social factors that cause fertility decrease; in the fifth section on family plan decisions.In the chapter ten, This studies the relationship between fertility and women's labor force participation rate, theoretically demonstrates that in one hand, the increase of women's wage and their expected work time by the fall of fertility can increase women's labor force participation rate; in another hand, the increase of women's bargaining power by the fall of fertility causes the participation rate decrease. It is also illustrated that because of Chinese institution in the economic planning times there exists positive correlation between Chinese fertility and women's labor force participation rate, but now this kind of positive correlation results in the increase of women's bargaining power.