The Impact Of Intergenerational Care On The Employment Of Middle-aged And Elderly People In Urban And Rural Areas And Analysis Of The Mechanism Of Action

The aging of China’s population is deepening and accelerating,and the average life expectancy is growing.The employment problem of the middle-aged and elderly groups is a general concern of the current society.In addition to personal factors,family factors,economic factors and other factors that affect the labor participation of middle-aged and elderly people,whether grandparents can provide intergenerational care to grandchildren is also the main reason that affects their work participation.Faced with the dilemma of intergenerational care and labor participation,what choices will the middle-aged and elderly people make due to the limitation of individual disposable time? Are there group differences and urban-rural differences in the decision-making process? Through which mechanisms does intergenerational care affect the employment decision-making of urban and rural middle-aged and elderly people? These are the problems that this paper wants to solve.Considering the general background of population migration,this paper conducts an analysis of the entire middle-aged and elderly population.According to the characteristics of the ancestral group of intergenerational care,it is subdivided into three ancestral groups: out of rural,into urban and urban.According to the differences in urban and rural labor markets and social security systems,the impact of intergenerational care on the employment of middle-aged and elderly people is divided into two empirical chapters,which reflect the urban-rural differences and group differences under the rapid economic transformation.Based on this,this paper systematically studies the impact of intergenerational care on the employment of middle-aged and elderly people in urban and rural areas by using the 2015 and 2018 balanced panel data of the China Health and Elderly Care Tracking Survey(CHARLS),with intergenerational care participation and intergenerational care time as the core explanatory variables.This paper first constructs panel Probit model and panel Tobit model to explore the impact of intergenerational care on the employment of rural middle-aged and elderly people(agricultural labor participation,agricultural labor time,non-agricultural labor participation and non-agricultural labor time),and the employment of urban middle-aged and elderly people(whether to retire early,the number of years of early retirement and working time);Secondly,considering the endogeneity of intergenerational care variables,the intergenerational care ratio of village residents is used as a tool variable,and the ivprobit model,ivtobit model and2 SLS model are used to estimate and modify the benchmark regression results;Thirdly,the method of replacing the core explanatory variable,the definition of the explained variable and the tool variable is used to test the robustness of the conclusion;Then,from the perspective of age,gender,registered residence,education level and other personal characteristics,whether there is a new born child in the family,whether it is an only child family and other family characteristics and regional characteristics,the heterogeneity analysis is carried out;Finally,through the internal mechanism test of intergenerational care affecting the employment of urban and rural middle-aged and elderly people,further clarify the path of intergenerational care affecting the employment of middle-aged and elderly people.The main research conclusions of this paper are as follows:Firstly,for the middle-aged and elderly in rural areas,intergenerational care has two different effects on the employment of the middle-aged and elderly in rural areas.Providing intergenerational care will significantly improve the agricultural labor participation probability of rural middle-aged and elderly people,but will shorten the agricultural labor time;It will significantly reduce the participation probability of non-agricultural labor and squeeze out non-agricultural labor time.Specifically,intergenerational care will increase the participation probability of rural middle-aged and elderly people in agricultural labor by 9.3%,and reduce the participation probability of non-agricultural labor by 3.1%.The results of heterogeneity analysis show that intergenerational care has a greater impact on women,middle-aged people,low education level,new born children in families,and rural middle-aged and elderly people in central and western regions.The mechanism test shows that intergenerational care mainly promotes the agricultural employment of rural middle-aged and elderly people by improving their health status,and promotes non-agricultural employment of rural middle-aged and elderly people by promoting social interaction,economic support and emotional support.Secondly,for the middle-aged and elderly people in urban areas,participation in intergenerational care will significantly increase the probability of early retirement of urban middle-aged and elderly people by 16.9%,and significantly increase the number of retirement years by about 1.23 years.For the non retired middle-aged and elderly people in cities and towns,intergenerational care participation and intergenerational care time have a significant negative impact on their working hours.The results of heterogeneity analysis show that the influence of intergenerational care on the employment of urban middle-aged and elderly people is heterogeneous in gender,registered residence,work type,and only child.Caring for grandchildren has a greater impact on urban middle-aged and elderly people who are women,non-agricultural household registration,working in enterprises,and only child families.The results of mechanism tests found that intergenerational care indirectly affected the employment of urban middle-aged and elderly people and promoted their early withdrawal from the labor market by promoting economic and emotional support,increasing the frequency of social interaction,and making their health worse.Thirdly,as far as urban-rural differences are concerned,there are educational level and regional differences in the impact of intergenerational care on the employment of rural middle-aged and elderly people,while there is no significant educational level and regional differences in the impact on the employment of urban middle-aged and elderly people.As far as the differences between urban and rural internal mechanisms are concerned,the effect of better health status is more significant in rural areas,while the mechanism of worse health status plays a role in urban areas.In addition,as far as group differences are concerned,intergenerational care has a greater impact on the employment and retirement decisions of middle-aged and elderly people with non-agricultural hukou living in cities and towns,while it has a smaller impact on the employment and retirement decisions of middle-aged and elderly people with rural hukou living in cities and towns.Based on the above conclusions,this paper puts forward the following policy recommendations: First,expand the supply of public childcare services,implement market-oriented child care,reduce the pressure of intergenerational care for the elderly,and incorporate the intergenerational care system provided by the elderly into the formal infant care system.Secondly,we should increase the training of child care skills,pay attention to the physical and mental health of the grandparents and grandchildren,and improve the well-being of care for the next generation.Finally,the implementation of the delayed retirement policy should protect the employment rights and interests of the elderly and realize the development and utilization of human resources for the elderly.