Impact of Childcare and Eldercare on Off‐farm Activities in Rural China

• Date: 01 March 2015
• Author: Fangbin Qiao,Yi Yao,Jian Zhang,Scott Rozelle,Linxiu Zhang
• Published date: 01 March 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/cwe.12109

100 China & World Economy / 100–120, Vol. 23, No. 2, 2015

©2015 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Impact of Childcare and Eldercare on Off-farm

Activities in Rural China

Fangbin Qiao, Scott Rozelle, Linxiu Zhang, Yi Yao, Jian Zhang*

Abstract

Using individual data collected in rural China and adopting Heckman’s two-step function,

we examined the impact of childcare and eldercare on laborers’ off-farm activities. Our

study finds that having school-aged children has a negative impact on rural laborers’

migration decisions and a positive impact on their decision to work in the local off-

farm employment market. As grandparents can help to take care of young children, the

impact of preschoolers is insignificant. Having elderly family to care for decreases the

income earned by female members of the family. Although both men and women are

actively engaged in off-farm employment today in rural China, this study shows that

women are still the primary care providers for both children and the elderly. Therefore,

reforming public school enrollment and high school/college entrance examination systems

so that migrant children can stay with their parents, this will help rural laborers to

migrate to cities. The present study also calls for more public services for preschoolers

and the elderly in rural China.

Key words: childcare, China, eldercare, gender, migration

JEL codes: J11, J16, J22

I. Introduction

Rural–urban migration plays an important role in China’s economy. 163 million rural

laborers migrated to urban areas for employment in 2012 (NBS, 2012a). This figure

equates to approximately half of the total number of individuals in China’s urban labor

*Fangbin Qiao, Professor, China Economics and Management Academy, Central University of Finance and

Economics, Beijing, China. Email: fangbin.qiao@gmail.com; Scott Rozelle, Senior Fellow, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific

Research Center, Stanford University, Stanford, USA. Email: rozelle@stanford.edu; Linxiu Zhang, Professor,

Center for Chinese Agriculture Policy, Institute for Geographical Sciences and Natural Resource Research, Chinese

Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. Email: lxzhang.ccap@igsnrr.ac.cn; Yi Yao, Assistant Professor, China

Economics and Management Academy, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing, China. Email:

yiyaocn@gmail.com; Jian Zhang, Associate Professor, School of Economics, Central University of Finance and

Economics, Beijing, China. Email: jian32@gmail.com.

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Impact of Childcare and Eldercare on Off-farm Activities

©2015 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

force. Many Chinese researchers agree that rural migration to cities played a vital role in

raising rural welfare during the 1980s and 1990s (Rozelle, 1996; Young, 2003). According

to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS, 2012b), the share of off-farm income in the

total income of the rural labor force increased from less than 10 percent in the early

1980s to more than 60 percent in 2011. Rural–urban migration has been identified as one of

the major engines of China’s economic growth; rural migration has also played a key role in

changing the structure of Chinese society (Cai and Wang, 2008).

Rural to urban migration is affected by many factors, including the rural–urban income

gap, personal and household characteristics and social networks (Zhang and Li, 2003;

Zhao, 2003; Zhang et al., 2008). However, there is one factor which has not been well

studied: childcare (Liu et al., 2010; Cook and Dong, 2011). Summarizing the results of a

number of studies that examine the impact of childcare on labor force participation,

Kalb (2009) finds that having children has a negative impact on labor force participation.

This is particularly true in the case of mothers who are the primary care providers.

However, when closer scrutiny is paid to these studies, the results are not consistent.

The published studies find heterogeneous impacts of having a preschooler at home on off-

farm employment. For example, Zhao (1997, 1999) and Song et al. (2009) do not find any

effect from having a preschool-aged child. Zhao (1997) concludes that the absence of an

impact was mostly because of the presence of grandparents who were able and willing to

take care of their grandchildren. Other scholars find that having preschool-aged children

at home has a significant and negative impact on the decision of the mother to migrate out

(e.g. Li and Zahniser, 2002; Su and Liu, 2003).

The impact of households having school-aged children on off-farm participation in

rural China also remains unclear. Zhao (1999) shows that having school-aged children

actually had a significant and positive impact on migration. Consistent with Zhao (1999),

Song et al. (2009) also find a positive relationship between having school-aged children

and migration in rural China.

Similar to the impact of childcare on off-farm activities, there is also debate on the

impact of having an elderly household member. Because of the general absence of pensions

and health insurance in China and other developing countries, supporting the elderly

remains, by and large, the duty of their adult children (Fang et al., 1992; World Bank, 1994;

Wang, 2006). Giles and Mu (2007) demonstrate that the presence of ill parents has a

significantly negative impact on the probability of adult children being engaged in migration.

Pang et al. (2004) show that migrants often have to end their employment in the city and

return to their homes in the countryside when their parents became ill. In contrast, Maurer-

Fazio et al. (2009) indicate that the presence of the elderly significantly increases the

likelihood of young laborers’ working participation because the elderly are able to help to