Does unpaid caregiving erode working hours among middle-aged Chinese adults?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huamin Chai ◽  
Rui Fu ◽  
Peter C. Coyte
Keyword(s):  
Work Productivity ◽  
Selection Procedure ◽  
Working Hours ◽  
Fold Increase ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Baseline Survey ◽  
Middle Aged ◽  
Chinese Adults ◽  
Hours Of Work ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Middle-aged adults are commonly confronted with the burden of paid work and multiple caregiving roles. This paper examines the relationship between weekly hours of unpaid caregiving and hours of work using data from the baseline survey of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study. The analysis was conducted on a nationally representative sample of 3,645 working-age Chinese adults aged 45-60 years who were not farming and had a young grandchild and/or a parent/parent-in-law. For women and men separately, we combined the use of a Heckman selection procedure and instrumental variables to estimate the relationship between weekly caregiving hours and hours of work. A caregiving threshold was also identified for women and men separately to allow for the testing of a kink and/or a discontinuity in this relationship. We found that for women, their working hours were initially unrelated to hours of caregiving before the threshold of 72 caregiving hours per week; then, their working hours experienced an almost two-fold increase at the caregiving threshold before falling by 2.02 percent for each additional hour of caregiving beyond the threshold. For men, their hours of work fell by 2.74 percent for each hourly increment in caregiving. Although a caregiving threshold of 112 hours was identified for men, there was insufficient evidence for a statistically significant kink or discontinuity in this relationship. These findings provide support for a range of fiscal and human resource policies that target employed family caregivers in order to advance their well-being while also maintaining their work productivity.JEL Classification: D13, J21, J22

scholarly journals How Do Middle-Aged Chinese Men and Women Balance Caregiving and Employment Income?

Healthcare ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 415
Author(s):  
Huamin Chai ◽  
Rui Fu ◽  
Peter C. Coyte
Keyword(s):  
Selection Procedure ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Baseline Survey ◽  
Care Provision ◽  
Middle Aged ◽  
Chinese Adults ◽  
Working Age ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Heckman Selection ◽  
Rule Out

Unpaid family caregivers might suffer losses in income as a result of care provision. Here we used data from the baseline survey of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study to assess the relationship between hours of weekly caregiving provided to grandchildren/parents/parents-in-law and individual’s monthly employment income. Our study sample comprised 3718 middle-aged Chinese adults who were of working age (45–60 years). For women and men separately, we used a likelihood-based method to determine a caregiving threshold in a two-stage Heckman selection procedure. Instrumental variables were used to rule out the endogeneity of caregiving hours. Our analysis revealed a negative association between caregiving and income for women that depended on a caregiving threshold of 63 h per week. There was an absence of caregiving-income relationship among men. These results offer new insights into the opportunity costs of unpaid caregiving and support tailored policies to protect the financial well-being of female caregivers.

scholarly journals How Do Middle-Aged Chinese Men and Women Balance Caregiving and Employment Income?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huamin Chai ◽  
Rui Fu ◽  
Peter C. Coyte
Keyword(s):  
Selection Procedure ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Baseline Survey ◽  
Care Provision ◽  
Middle Aged ◽  
Chinese Adults ◽  
Working Age ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Heckman Selection ◽  
Rule Out

Unpaid family caregivers might suffer losses in income as a result of care provision. Here we used data from the baseline survey of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study to assess the relationship between hours of weekly caregiving provided to grandchildren/parents/parents-in-law and individual’s monthly employment income. Our study sample comprised 3,718 middle-aged Chinese adults who were of working age (45-60 years). For women and men separately, we used a likelihood-based method to determine a caregiving threshold in a two-stage Heckman selection procedure. Instrumental variables were used to rule out the endogeneity of caregiving hours. Our analysis revealed a negative association between caregiving and income for women that depended on a caregiving threshold of 63-hours per week. There was an absence of caregiving-income relationship among men. These results offer new insights into the opportunity costs of unpaid caregiving and support tailored policies to protect the financial well-being of female caregivers.

Compensatory Coping Through the Extension of Working Hours

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 115-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maie Stein ◽  
Sylvie Vincent-Höper ◽  
Nicole Deci ◽  
Sabine Gregersen ◽  
Albert Nienhaus
Keyword(s):  
Job Demands ◽  
Working Hours ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Leader Member Exchange ◽  
Workplace Health ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Data Analyses ◽  
Member Exchange ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Advance Knowledge

Abstract. To advance knowledge of the mechanisms underlying the relationship between leadership and employees’ well-being, this study examines leaders’ effects on their employees’ compensatory coping efforts. Using an extension of the job demands–resources model, we propose that high-quality leader–member exchange (LMX) allows employees to cope with high job demands without increasing their effort expenditure through the extension of working hours. Data analyses ( N = 356) revealed that LMX buffers the effect of quantitative demands on the extension of working hours such that the indirect effect of quantitative demands on emotional exhaustion is only significant at low and average levels of LMX. This study indicates that integrating leadership with employees’ coping efforts into a unifying model contributes to understanding how leadership is related to employees’ well-being. The notion that leaders can affect their employees’ use of compensatory coping efforts that detract from well-being offers promising approaches to the promotion of workplace health.

scholarly journals Exploring Stress and Problematic Use of Short-Form Video Applications among Middle-Aged Chinese Adults: The Mediating Roles of Duration of Use and Flow Experience

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 132
Author(s):  
Qing Huang ◽  
Mingxin Hu ◽  
Hongliang Chen
Keyword(s):  
Online Survey ◽  
Short Form ◽  
Mediation Effect ◽  
Flow Experience ◽  
Middle Aged ◽  
Chinese Adults ◽  
Teenagers And Young Adults ◽  
Smartphone Use ◽  
Middle Aged Adults ◽  
The Relationship

The pervasiveness of smartphones and the popularity of short-form video applications (SVAs), such as TikTok, among middle-aged Chinese adults have raised concerns about problematic SVAs use. Although a plethora of research has examined problematic smartphone use among teenagers and young adults, scarce attention has been paid to the middle-aged group. This study integrates the psychopathological approach and the compensatory use approach to explicate problematic SVAs use among middle-aged Chinese adults. We aim to examine the relationship between stress and problematic SVAs use via the mediating roles of duration of use and flow experience. A total of 194 middle-aged adults from across the nation participated in an online survey. The results showed that stress was positively associated with problematic SVAs use. We also found that duration of use positively mediated the relationship between stress and problematic SVAs use. Furthermore, a serial mediation effect of duration of use and flow experience was found. The findings suggest that the aforementioned two approaches are complementary to each other in explicating problematic SVAs use, but the compensatory use approach explains more than the psychopathological approach does. Flow experience extends the original compensatory use approach and demonstrates the importance of incorporating techno-psychological predictors in understanding problematic SVAs use.

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