The Changing Patterns and Determinants of Stay-at-Home Motherhood in Urban China, 1982 to 2015

Author(s):  
Zheng Mu ◽  
Felicia F. Tian

This paper documents trends in and examines determinants of stay-at-home motherhood in urban China from 1982 to 2015. China once had the world’s leading female labor force participation rate. Since the economic reforms starting from the early 1980s, however, some mothers have been withdrawing from the labor force due to diminished state support, a rise in intensive parenting, and heightened work-family conflicts. Based on data from the 1982, 1990, and 2000 Chinese censuses, the 2005 mini-census, and the 2006–2015 Chinese General Social Survey, we find mothers’ non-employment increased for every educational group and grew at a much faster rate among mothers than it did among fathers, particularly those with small children. Moreover, the negative relationships between mothers’ education and non-employment, and between mothers’ family income and non-employment weakened overtime. This possibly due to women with more established resources can better “afford” the single-earner arrangement and also more emphasize the importance of intensive parenting, than their less resourced counterparts. These findings signal the resurgence of a gendered division of labor in urban China.

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 453-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ling Zhu

After the massive commodification of urban housing in the 1990s, housing inequality is now a major source of wealth inequality in urban China. Previous studies of housing inequality have rarely explored the extent and mechanisms of intergenerational housing inequality reproduction. This study fills this gap and examines how intergenerational housing asset transfer affects housing status in contemporary urban China. An analysis of data from the 2006 Chinese General Social Survey yields two important findings. First, ascribed factors such as parental social status have a greater influence than individuals’ own social status on their housing status. Second, intergenerational housing asset transfer has become an important mechanism of housing inequality reproduction. Elite parents are more likely to provide transferred assets, which prevents their downward-mobilised children from changing their relative housing status. Against the backdrop of rising wealth inequality in China, this study illustrates how the intergenerational transmission of economic resources is becoming an increasingly important mechanism of inequality reproduction.


2020 ◽  
pp. 073112142093773
Author(s):  
Jun Xu ◽  
Wei Zhao ◽  
Fang Gong

Synthesizing the theory of fundamental causes in the health literature with the stratification research on transitional economies, this paper investigates how the multidimensional socioeconomic status (SES), especially education and communist party membership, is associated with three self-rated health outcomes in urban China. Using data from the 2013 Chinese General Social Survey, we find that party membership is associated with better self-rated health, higher health-related quality of life and work, and lower levels of self-rated depression, whereas the effect of education is somewhat more elusive than it usually is in Western societies. Our findings suggest that the effects of socioeconomic indicators are better understood by being contextualized in a sociopolitical environment. It is also fruitful to include both global (education, income, employment status, and subjective SES) and local measures of SES (party membership and housing ownership) in exploring their associations with health in the world’s largest transitional society.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Felicia F. Tian

AbstractGuanxi is a fundamental, but controversial, feature of Chinese society. This article examines public attitudes about the fairness of guanxi and how Chinese market reform is affecting these attitudes. The reciprocity-laden and tie-sensitive nature of guanxi conflicts with the efficiency-oriented goal of a market economy. Disapproval of guanxi is thus increasing as marketization progresses. Results from the 2008 Chinese General Social Survey show that guanxi is more likely to be viewed as unfair in places with higher levels of marketization. The educational gradient decreases with marketization, and change is more pronounced among people working in the market sector than it is among people working in the state sector. My findings suggest that Chinese market reform increases public disapproval of guanxi.


2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Marlon A. Mojica ◽  
Virgilio M. Tatlonghari

This paper examines the empirical relationship between unemployment and real output in the Philippines utilizing quarterly data from the Labor Force Survey by the Philippine Statistics Authority for the period from 1990-2014. The study employed three variants of Okun’s Law – the “gap” approach, the “first difference” approach, and a dynamic approach.   Findings show that the Okun’s coefficients based on the gap approach are consistent with the theoretical expectation of a negative relationship.  In the ARDL model, labor force participation rate and trade openness were found to be significantly related to unemployment. The result of dummy variable test revealed the presence of structural break following the re-definition of unemployment in the Philippines in 2005. Recursive least squares and rolling regressions show evidence of parameter instability in several sub-periods.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 1701-1715
Author(s):  
Wen-bo ZHU ◽  
Yong-fu CHEN ◽  
Jing ZHAO ◽  
Bei-bei WU

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 237802312098285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Schieman ◽  
Philip J. Badawy ◽  
Melissa A. Milkie ◽  
Alex Bierman

The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic upended work, family, and social life. These massive changes may have created shifts in exposure to work-life conflict. Using a national survey that followed Canadian workers from September 2019 into April and June 2020, the authors find that work-life conflict decreased among those with no children at home. In contrast, for those with children at home, the patterns depended on age of youngest child. Among individuals with children younger than 6 or between 6 and 12, no decreases in work-life conflict were observed. In contrast, those with teenagers did not differ from the child-free. Although these patterns did not significantly differ by gender, they were amplified among individuals with high work-home integration. These findings suggest an overall pattern of reduced work-life conflict during the pandemic—but also that these shifts were circumscribed by age of youngest child at home and the degree of work-home integration.


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