School of Public Administration, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China.
Center for Public Policy Research, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Jan 13;18(2):641. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18020641.
Unpaid family caregivers must consider the economic trade-off between caregiving and paid employment. Prior literature has suggested that labor force participation (LFP) declines with caregiving intensity, but no study has evaluated this relationship by accounting for the presence of both kinks and discontinuities. Here we used respondents of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study baseline survey who were nonfarming, of working age (aged 45-60) and had a young grandchild and/or a parent/parent-in-law. For women and men separately, a caregiving threshold-adjusted probit model was used to assess the association between LFP and weekly unpaid caregiving hours. Instrumental variables were used to rule out the endogeneity of caregiving hours. Of the 3718 respondents in the analysis, LFP for men was significantly and inversely associated with caregiving that involved neither discontinuities nor kinks. For women, a kink was identified at the caregiving threshold of eight hrs/w such that before eight hours, each caregiving hour was associated with an increase of 0.0257 in the marginal probability of LFP, but each hour thereafter was associated with a reduction of 0.0014 in the marginal probability of LFP. These results have implications for interventions that simultaneously advance policies of health, social care and labor force.
无酬家庭护工必须考虑到照顾和有薪工作之间的经济权衡。先前的文献表明，劳动力参与率（LFP）随着护理强度的增加而下降，但没有研究通过考虑到两者的拐点和不连续性来评估这种关系。在这里，我们使用中国健康与退休纵向研究基线调查的非农业、处于工作年龄（45-60 岁）、有年幼孙辈和/或父母/公婆的受访者。对于女性和男性分别，使用有照顾门槛调整的概率模型来评估 LFP 与每周无酬照顾时间之间的关联。使用工具变量排除照顾时间的内生性。在分析中的 3718 名受访者中，男性的劳动力参与率与既没有不连续性也没有拐点的照顾呈显著负相关。对于女性，在 8 小时/周的照顾门槛处发现了一个拐点，即在此之前，每照顾一个小时，LFP 的边际概率就会增加 0.0257，但此后每增加一个小时，LFP 的边际概率就会减少 0.0014。这些结果对于同时推进健康、社会关怀和劳动力政策的干预措施具有重要意义。
