Research On The Influence Of Spouse’s Working Hours On Female Labor Force Participation

As one of the decisive factors to promote economic development,the importance of labor force participation is self-evident.After the reform and opening up,China’s economy has achieved rapid development.To a large extent,it has benefited from China’s sufficient labor supply,which has enabled China to obtain a large number of "demographic dividends." From a global perspective,the male labor participation rate is relatively stable,while China’s female labor participation rate has been among the highest in the world for a long time.Therefore,it can be said that the female labor participation rate has greatly contributed to the development of China’s economy.However,data shows that China’s female labor participation rate has been showing a downward trend in recent years,leading to the continuous loss of China’s“demographic dividend”.At present,China is facing the crisis of aging population and declining labor force.In order to achieve long-term stable economic development,increasing the supply of female labor needs to be solved urgently.With the rapid development of China’s economy,the phenomenon of workers working overtime has gradually become a social norm,and the overtime culture has therefore aroused social concerns and government attention.Long hours of work will undoubtedly have an impact on workers’ physiology and psychology,thereby affecting their labor participation.Compared with men,the influencing factors of female labor participation in decision-making are more complex.In addition to personal factors,they are also largely affected by the labor supply of their spouses.Therefore,this article analyzes the characteristics of Chinese female labor participation based on the China Family Panel Studies（CFPS）.In terms of empirical research,this article uses the Probit model to test the impact of spouse’s working hours on female labor participation.The empirical test results show that the increase in the working hours of the spouse does not reduce the female labor participation rate.On the contrary,the greater the possibility of women participating in the labor as the working time of the spouse increases.Further research found that the mechanism by which the increase in spouse’s working hours promotes women’s labor participation is the impact of family economic pressure in the case of homogenous marriages.Women with different education levels are different in sensitivity to this.When women’s education levels are low,the increase in spouse’s working hours significantly increased women’s labor participation,but when women had a higher level of education,there was no significant impact between the two.