Font Size: a A A

Study On Elderly Labor Supply In Rural China

Posted on:2013-01-23Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:Z K NingFull Text:PDF
GTID:1119330374468735Subject:Agricultural Economics and Management
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
Both birth and death rate have been decreasing simultaneously, expected life-span hasbecome long, urbanization accelerates incessantly, and the rural surplus labor has drained intothe urban in large scale, which cause into the clipping aging of the rural population and laborin China. And so, it must put forward a new request and challenge for the policy on laboremployment and social security. Yet, there are fewer literatures about the rural elderly laborsupply. So, this paper pays more attention on this topic. It firstly reviews the rural elderlylabor supply in China from historical view and in other countries (both developed anddeveloping) from cross-sectional comparably view, and then based on agriculturalintra-household decision model, it studies the microcosmic labor supply of the rural elderly byanalysis on Panel data from CHNS, which will give some policy implication on the rural laboremployment market and the rural orderly's rights and interests. The main contents andviewpoints are the following:Chapter one: Introduction. This chapter firstly introduces the research backgroundfrom two aspects such as a lot of rural labor that get good education and well health migratinginto the urban and the rural population getting old quickly, and secondly points the aim andvalue of the study. It also ascertains some basic conception of the paper, and points out that inthis paper it will follow the two hypotheses "economic rational small peasants" and"expanded left-behind agricultural household which bonds the production and consumptiontogether". So, to study on the rural elderly labor supply, it should explain the inner householddecision. Lastly, according to the aim of the study, this chapter also introduces the researchmethod, data, and some possible innovation of the paper.Chapter two: Review on Chinese rural elderly labor supply from history. Firstly,based on the official annual data, this chapter analyzes the impact of both the rural populationaging and the rural young labor immigrating into the urban to rural elderly work participation.Secondly, based on the official policy texts on employment and social security, this chapteranalyzes the impact of the evolvement of the policy to the rural labor employment. Thirdly,based on literatures synthesis, this chapter analyzes the trend of Chinese rural elderly laborsupply. After these qualitative and quantitative analyses, this chapter finds out that: theparticipation ratio of Chinese rural elderly is relatively high, which is the result of both the traditional convention and the development of society, political and economy. From historicalview, the rural elderly labor supply has been the result of "3-stress force" and "3-push power".Chapter three: The changing trend of the elderly labor supply overseas. In order tomake a research reference, this chapter takes a multinational comparable study amongAmerican, Japan, Brazil, and India. And it finds: the problem of the elderly labor supplyalways appears and become a research focus along with the population aging, whether thedeveloped or the developing countries. The aging of the developing countries is still at theinitial stage, and the elderly work participation ratio is high, which will appear an increasingtrend in short-term. And there are lots of the influence factors of the elderly labor supply,some related to individual, some related to family, and some related to social economiccondition. Of course, the wage is an important economic factor, yet many researches havefound that the wage elasticity of the elderly labor supply is often negative in developingcountries.Chapter four: Theoretic analysis on the elderly labor supply in rural China. Thischapter reviews on general intra-household decision models and agricultural intra-householddecision models to get possible outcomes under different condition of intra-householddecision. And based on discussing the characters of Chinese household, it points out that thedecision of Chinese household is more like the unitary household decision, and there is noseparability between production and consumption of the agricultural household because of thefaulty rural market. Therefore, it is ok to make a unitary household decision model includingage and gender to study the rural elderly labor supply in China, which will get quantitativetest in the following chapters.Chapter five: Description analysis on the rural elderly and their labor participation.After introducing selecting sample and data analysis method of CHNS used in this study, thischapter mainly use description analysis on the selected CHNS data transparently. Suchdescription analysis not only gives out a general look-in on the rural elderly and theirhousehold, but also a primely analysis on the time allocation and work-participation of therural elderly in China.Chapter six: Positive analysis on the rural elderly labor supply. Firstly, this chapter,based on structure model method, estimates the rural labor supply function on wage-work,household agricultural work, household non-agricultural business one by one using G-2SLS.It finds that the labor supply functions of wage-work and agricultural work has both statisticand economic meaning. For example, the total working-time on wage-work and agriculturalwork of the old female is lower than that of the old men; the decrease of total population andthe ratio of non-agricultural income in the total income of the family, and the increase of totalincome of the family can cut down the labor supply of the rural elderly (both genders) on the two works; the urbanization development will heighten the wage-work supply, yet lower theagricultural work supply. Moreover, both the wage-work supply function and the agriculturalwork supply function show that the marginal labor production (viz. shadow wage ratio) hasnegative effect to the quantity of labor supply, which mean the leisure is an "inferior goods"to the rural elderly who will add ceaselessly the labor supply if they can get an absoluteincrease of money income. Such finds is not sure-enough at the household non-agriculturalbusiness work limited by the insufficient sample. Secondly, based on Panel Probit models,this chapter also estimates the work participation decision behaviors. It shows that whetherliving with other young people or not will affect markedly the non-income work participation,for example the old female will reduce the probability to nursing infants and increase theprobability to doing housework if the amount of young people living with her increases. Andthere is serious gender difference among the different work participation. lastly, this chapteralso studies the impact of the rural elderly's work participation to their welfare by Crosstabmethod, which finds that the work participation cannot improve their synthetical well-beingbut remitting their uptight living condition from economy.Chapter seven: Conclusion. This chapter concludes main finds of the total research,gives out some suggestions to relative policy, and puts forward some problems needingresearch in future.
Keywords/Search Tags:the rural elderly, labor supply, intra-household decision model
PDF Full Text Request
Related items