The Influence Of Family Structure On Married Women Labor Supply

Before market-oriented reforms, the Government takes a lot of measures topotect the women’s employment rights, hence, compared to other countries, China’sfemale labor force participation rate always the highest in the world. However, duringthe China’s economic transformation three decades, the female labor forceparticipation rates show a downward trend, and the gap in employment rates andincome levels between female and male are expanding. Meanwhile, when othercountries or regions in the period of economic restructuring, the decline in femalelabor force supply also occupied most of the decline in the whole labor force supply.Therefore, the existing literatures generally regard the market-oriented reform as thedirect cause of the decline in female labor force participation rate, and even a lot ofstudies suggest that this is the main reason. Due to the market-oriented reforms, thegovernment cancelled the protection measures on women’s labor rights, naturaldifferences between women and men revealed, women in employment and incomelevels are showed with a wide gap between males. From the perspective ofneoclassical family division of labor theory, and according to the comparativeadvantage principle, the female certainly quit from the labor force market, andengaged in housework. This is the theoretical basis of this article, and we attempt toprobe the effect of family structure on female labor supply in this theoreticalframework.In the theoretical framework of neoclassical household division of labor, usingpanel data of1991-2009"China Health and Nutrition Survey"(CHNS), this paper hasmade empirical test in two aspects: First, we tested the impact of family structure onwhether married women participate in the labor market; Second, we tested the impactof family structure on the hours of working time of employed women. In order toinvestigate the different effects, we both used three ways (whether living with theparents or parents-in-law, whether living with the mother or mother-in-law, andwhether living in the same community/village with parents or parents-in-law) tomeasure family structure in the two tests. Based on the analysis, we reached thefollowing conclusions: first, the two empirical test both showed that living with theirparents or parents-in-law have increased the female labor supply, and living with themother or mother-in-law has greater impact, this also confirmed the theme of this paper from the side; Second, from the results of three different family structuresmetric regression, the closer the living with their parents or parents-in-law, the greaterthe impact on female labor supply. On the basis of theoretical analysis and empiricaltest, we proposed some policy recommendations that will improve female labor forceparticipation rate, which reflects the application value of this article.The improvement of the female labor force participation rate has broad andfar-reaching significance of the family and the community, and participate in labormarket is also an important way to realize their own values. Therefore, by studyingthe impact factors of female labor force participation rate, so as to providerecommendations to formulate relevant policies has important theoretical significanceand reality value.