Influence Of Family Elderly Care On Female Labor And Employment

The population aging process is accelerating,leading to the rising demand for elderly care in our country and the increasing burden on elderly caregiver.Due to the imperfect social pension service system in our country and the traditional concept of "family support for the aged",the family elderly care is still the main way of elderly care in our country at present.Due to the traditional gender division,adult women in the family tend to take main responsibility of the family elderly care.As family elderly care is a time-consuming and energy-intensive activity,it is easy to conflict with the employment of female caregivers.Studying the impact of family elderly care on female labor employment can provide the basis for formulating support policies for family caregivers and promoting female employment.On the basis of defining the basic concept of disability elderly,family elderly care and labor employment,this paper first analyzes the situation of women providing elderly care and their employment.Secondly,this paper uses the data of China Health and Nutrition Survey to study the impact of family elderly care on the labor supply of female caregivers by empirical analysis.The empirical results show that family The elderly family care has a negative effect on the participation of women in urban labor and the participation of rural women in non-agricultural labor.Providing 15 hours or more of family care for the elderly each week significantly reduces the labor participation rate of urban women by 26.8%,making rural women's participation in agricultural labor significantly increase by 36.1%,non-farm participation in labor dropped significantly by 20.8%;in terms of labor supply time,the responsibility of family care for the elderly caused a significant reduction of 7.5 hours for rural women.Thirdly,based on the case interviews with 26 female home elderly caregivers in Huaian,Jiangsu Province,this paper qualitatively analyzes the impact of elderly care on female employment.The analysis shows that the family elderly care not only restrains the labor participation of female caregivers in urban area,but also reduces their labor supply time.It also leads to the change of the occupational types of laborers,the decrease of labor income,the career development of women,the tension and fatigue in employment,and the weakening professional role and so on.For elderly women carers in rural areas,the responsibility for family care for the elderly will provide their participation rate in agricultural labor,restraining their participation in non-agricultural labor and reducing their labor income.Finally,based on the conclusion of the study,some policy suggestions such as accelerating and perfecting social pension service system,establishing long-term care system in our country,providing nursing subsidies and nursing holidays are put forward.