Study On The Influence Of The Number Of Children On The Labor Supply Of The Elderly

With the continuous deepening of population aging,safeguarding the rights and interests of the elderly and moderately developing their human resources have become powerful measures to address active population aging today.The issue of labor supply for the elderly has also attracted the attention of many scholars.Among the many factors that affect the labor supply of the elderly,family factors can’t be ignored.As one of the most important members of the family,children’s quantity structure and intergenerational relationships derived from it have a particularly important impact on the labor supply decisions of the elderly.Currently,the changes in family population structure and the rapidly rising cost of living have increased the burden of supporting young children,and the elderly care function of families is gradually weakening.The intergenerational relationship between elderly parents and their children has gradually shifted from the traditional "back feeding" model of children supporting elderly parents to the "back feeding" model.In this context,having multiple children does not necessarily mean having more happiness,but may also bring more economic burden to the parents,which may to some extent affect the labor supply for the elderly.Therefore,this article explores the impact of the number of children on the labor supply of the elderly and related influencing mechanisms from a family level interview chart.Based on the theory of family labor supply and the theory of intergenerational exchange,this paper takes the data of China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study(CHARLS)in 2018 as a sample,uses Probit and Tobit models to study the impact of the number of children on the labor supply of the elderly,and uses the instrumental variable method to solve the endogenous problem.Finally,the mediating effect is used to test the possible influence mechanism.The results show that the number of children has a significant positive impact on the labor participation and labor duration of the elderly.After using the instrumental variable method to solve the endogenous problems,this result is still robust.In the further study of the influence of the number structure of children on the labor supply of the elderly,it is found that in the gender structure of children,the increase in the number and proportion of sons has a significant positive impact on the labor supply of the elderly,and the number of daughters has no significant impact on the labor supply of the elderly.On the marital characteristics of children,the increase in the number of unmarried children and their proportion has a positive effect on the labor supply of the elderly at the statistical level of 1 %,while the number of married children has no significant effect on the labor supply of the elderly.After the sub-sample test,it is found that from the perspective of gender,compared with the male elderly,the number of children and their structural characteristics have a greater positive impact on the labor participation of the female elderly,while the labor duration is the opposite.In terms of household registration type,the number of children has a greater impact on the labor supply of urban elderly than rural elderly.In addition,the results of the mediating effect test show that the number of children will have a positive impact on the labor supply of the elderly by increasing the economic pressure of the elderly.Finally,combined with the above research conclusions,this paper puts forward the following suggestions:First,construct a flexible retirement system to encourage and guide the elderly to participate appropriately according to individual differences.Secondly,encourage rational childbirth and establish correct gender and elderly care concepts.Thirdly,promote the reform of marriage customs,reduce marriage costs,and alleviate economic pressure.