Age Of The Youngest Child And Labor Participation Of Married Women

At present,China’s population development is at a major turning point.In2018,the population aged 65 and above reached 166.58 million,accounting for11.9 percent of the total population.China has joined the ranks of an aging society.Meanwhile,data from the National Bureau of Statistics shows that the number and proportion of China’s working-age population have both fallen for seven consecutive years since 2012,with a total reduction of more than 26 million people in the seven years.In an effort to ease the population crisis caused by China’s aging population and the accelerating decline of its working-age population,the Chinese government has begun to gradually liberalize family planning.However,after the implementation of the two-child policy,China has not seen the expected baby boom.On the one hand,China’s population is aging,and on the other hand,the fertility rate keeps falling.The era of negative growth of China’s labor force has come,which means that the shortage of labor force in China is becoming increasingly prominent.The adjustment of population fertility policy is a long-term and fundamental measure to increase labor supply.However,studying how to activate the existing labor force stock,improve labor participation rate and form a short-term and effective increment of labor supply is of great importance and far-reaching significance to the healthy development of China’s economy.In recent years,the main feature of China’s labor market changes is the gradual decline in labor force participation rate,and the female labor force participation rate declines faster than the male labor force.In order to optimize the population structure,China began to implement the universal two-child policy in2016,and some married women covered by the policy may have the desire to have another child and have the behavior of having another child.Women’s labor participation decision-making is often closely linked to their family responsibilities,in which the role of mother plays an important role in women’s family responsibilities,which is mainly reflected in that women often bear the pressure of childbirth and child care.The stress of raising a child on a woman depends on many factors,and the age of the youngest child is one of the most important.Therefore,the paper uses the micro data from dynamic Survey of Chinese Labor force(China Labor-force Dynamics Survey,CLDS)in 2014 and 2016,using Probit model examines the impact of the age of youngest child on labor force participation of married women,and make a series of robustness test on our main conclusion,finally put forward the corresponding policy recommendations according to the results of the study.the empirical results show that compared to married women whose youngest children aged at least 23,having children under 3 years old will significantly reduce the female labor participation rate.This may also be the main reason why the actual fertility rate of two-child is much lower than expected after the implementation of the "universal two-child" policy.On the other hand,when the youngest child is aged 4-12,13-18,and 19-22,the labor force participation rate of married women will increase significantly,and the labor force participation rate will reach its peak when the youngest child is aged 13-18.The effect of the age of the youngest child on the labor force participation of married women was not only statistically significant but also economically significant.When the age of the youngest child is regarded as a continuous variable,its influence on the labor force participation of married women increases first and then decreases nonlinearly,and reaches the inflection point when the youngest child is 16-17.Subsequently,we test the robustness of the baseline regression results in terms of measurement,change of reference group,change of variable definition,sample adjustment,placebo test and endogeneity of the number of children,all of which showed that our main conclusions are robust.