earticle

영어

Low female labor force participation has been an important issue in Asian countries like Korea and Japan. China’s female labor force participation rate has been relatively high, but is beginning to decline. The previous literature on determinants of female labor participation reached a consensus that age, education, marital status, and children are the main factors. However, the previous research does not address the role of parents, or only the effect of cohabitation with parents due to the lack of data. This is problematic since the presence of parents in vicinity may also have a similar effect to cohabitation with parents. This paper analyzes the effect of parents on the labor market participation of married women in China by taking into account the residence type of parents. A 5-year panel dataset of China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), covering the period between 2000 and 2011, was utilized for the analysis. The analysis is carried out in three steps. First, all different types of residence are regressed as dummy variables to determine the threshold of “vicinity to parents.” Then, using the new indicator variable and instrument variables, a 2SLS method is applied to address endogeneity issues. Finally, sub-sample regressions are implemented to investigate the mechanism of parents’ impact. There are four main findings in this paper. First, the participation rate of women increases when they live with their parents and reside with or next to their parents-in-law. Second, living in close proximity to parents’ generation has a positive effect on women’s labor participation before and after controlling for the confounding factors. Third, this paper analyzes the property of the endogeneity between living close to parents and female labor participation, proving the existence of negative correlation between them. Last but not least, it is found that parents' influence is greater in the sub-sample of women with children less than 3-years old than in other groups, confirming that living near to parents improves female labor supply because parents help raise children.