The Impact Of Care Burden On The Agricultural Labor Supply Of Middle-Aged And Elderly People In Rural Areas

With the deepening of population aging and the increasing of average life expectancy,the aging of the population makes the elderly care problem increasingly serious,the demand for elderly care is also increasing,and it is more and more common for the young elderly to take care of their elderly parents.The family structure of our country tends to be miniaturized.In the face of fierce market competition and pressure to support their parents,young children bear the burden of family,and have no time to take care of their young children,so they need the help of middle-aged and elderly people.With the acceleration of urbanization in our country,a large number of young rural labors pour into cities,and a large number of left-behind old people and left-behind children appeared in the countryside.On the one hand,the middle-aged and elderly people in rural areas gradually become the main labor force in agricultural production in our country.On the other hand,the middle-aged and elderly people in rural areas bear the burden of taking care of their grandchildren and their parents.Due to the restriction of individual disposable time,the middle-aged and elderly people in rural areas are faced with a dilemma,the care burden,that is,to take care of their parents and grandchildren.What will be the impact on the agricultural labor participation and the agricultural labor time of the middle-aged and elderly people in rural areas? Is there a difference between the impact on rural women and men? Is there a difference between middleaged people and elderly people in rural areas?To solve above problems,this paper summarizes the relevant research at home and abroad,and bases on the theory of work-leisure,the theory of household labor supply.Using the CHARLS data in 2013,choosing agricultural labor participation and agricultural labor time as dependent variables,selecting care degree(having no care burden,that is,neither caring for grandchildren nor parents;having one care burden,that is,taking care of grandchildren or parents;having two care burdens,that is,taking care of both grandchildren and parents,and type of care burden(whether or not to care for the grandchildren,whether or not to care for the parents)as the core independent variable,the Heckman model and Two-part model are adopted.For the first part of the labor participation model,the full sample is used to estimate by the Probit model,and for the second part of the labor time model,the participating sub-sample is used to estimate by the OLS model.To study the influence of care degree and type of care burden on agricultural labor participation and agricultural labor time of middle-aged and elderly people in rural areas,and to analyze the gender and age differences.The findings are as follows:(1)the degree of care significantly reduce the rural middle-aged and elderly people agricultural labor time,the negative impact on agricultural labor participation is not significant.First,if we contrast the male with female middle-aged and elderly people in rural areas,the degree of care significantly reduces the rural female middle-aged and elderly people agricultural labor participation and agricultural labor time,the impact on rural male middle-aged and elderly people is not significant;Second,if we contrast the middle-aged people with elderly people in rural areas,the degree of care significantly reduces the agricultural labor participation and agricultural labor time of the middle-aged people,the impact on the elderly people in rural areas is not significant;(2)the influence of caring for grandchildren and parents on the supply of agricultural labor for the middleaged and elderly people in rural areas is different.First,in terms of labor participation,taking care of grandchildren has a negative effect on the agricultural labor participation of the middle-aged and elderly people in rural areas,which is not statistically significant,while caring for the parents significantly increases the agricultural labor participation of the middle-aged and elderly people in the rural areas;Second,in terms of labor time,taking care of grandchildren has significantly reduced the agricultural labor time of the rural middle-aged and elderly people,while caring for their parents has increased the agricultural labor time of the rural middleaged and elderly people,which is not statistically significant.(3)The influence of taking care of grandchildren on the supply of agricultural labor in rural middle-aged and elderly people has sex difference,and the influence of taking care of grandchildren and parents on the supply of agricultural labor in rural middle-aged and elderly people has age difference.First,if we contrast the male with female middleaged and elderly people in rural areas,taking care of grandchildren significantly reduced the rural women's agricultural labor time,and the influence of caring for grandchildren on the supply of rural men's agricultural labor was not significant.The influence of caring for parents on the supply of rural men's and women's agricultural labor were not significant;Second,if we contrast the middle-aged people with elderly people in rural areas,taking care of grandchildren significantly reduced the supply of rural middleaged agricultural labor.Caring for parents significantly increased rural middle-aged agricultural labor participation,and caring for grandchildren and parents of the rural elderly people has no significant impact on the supply of agricultural labor.The innovation of this paper mainly lies in the different degree and mechanism of the influence of caring for grandchildren and parents on the agricultural labor supply of rural middle-aged and elderly people,but the two are rarely combined in the existing literature.It is rare to study the influence of agricultural labor supply on the middle-aged and elderly people in rural areas.Because the data used in this paper do not have the age information of the grandchildren and the health information of parents,it is not possible to study in depth whether there are differences in the influence of caring for the grandchildren of different ages and caring for the parents of different health on the supply of agricultural labor for the middle-aged and elderly people,which can be the direction of further study in the future.