This journal is one of the earliest journals on population science in China. It is issued worldwide and indexed by CSSCI, and it is listed as the national Chinese core periodicaland the core periodical on population science.
Editor-in-Chief Yu Xiao
Deputy Editor-in-Chief Wang Xiaofeng, Wang Huabo
Editorial Board Wang Guangzhou, Wang Jinying, Yi Hao, Tian Yipeng, Sun Changzhi, Zhu Yu, Zhang Shiwei, Qiu Hong, Lu Jiehua, Chen Yingzi, Li Shuzhuo, Fan Lida, Yang Chenggang, Yang
In the majority of Western industrialized countries, the death rate of unmarried people (unmarried, widowed or divorced) is 2–3 times higher than that of married people for all age groups, known as the Farr-Bertillon effect. In the social sciences, few effects are effective at all times and in all countries. China and these Western countries have different family values and family structures, so it is not clear whether the Farr-Bertillon effect exists in China. Therefore, this paper studies the effect of marital status on death rates based on China’s census data of 1990 and 2010. The investigation leads to the following results. In the 15–59 age group, the death rate of widowed or divorced people younger than 30 is much higher than the death rate of the unmarried. The relative mortality rations (RMR) in China is higher than Western countries’ comparing the same age brackets. Divorce and bereavement have a greater impact on male, consistent with the results in Western countries. For unmarried people, the impact on male in youth is greater than for female, and the impact on female in middle age is greater than male, consistent with the findings of Japanese studies. After all, in Asia, health is a more important factor to the bride than to the groom. However, in most Western countries, the RMR of unmarried male is always higher than that of females at the same age. In the 60 and above age group, the health status of married people is better than unmarried people. The beneficial effects of marriage on health are greater for elderly female than for elderly male. The above studies show that the Farr-Bertillon effect exists in China. Being unmarried, divorced or widowed in almost all ages has a potentially adverse effect on health, but the specific manifestations in China are different from those in Western industrialized countries.
Marriage has always been an important factor that affects women’s labor participation. However, domestic research has only regard marital status as a control variable, lacking an in-depth analysis of the mechanism between marital status and labor participation, and endogenous problems have not received attention. Based on labor participation decision-making, starting from the determinants of market wages and reserved wage, the empirical analysis is carried out using the Third Survey of Women’s Social Status data. Under the framework of marriage, the effects of personal characteristics, family characteristics, generational characteristics and macroeconomic characteristics on female labor participation are discussed. Based on the Probit model, the regression results show that the married status has a significant negative impact on women’s labor participation compared with the unmarried, and the negative impact on urban women is greater than that on rural women. For different birth cohorts, the influence of marital status on female labor participation is different. Through the Wald test, it is found that there is an endogenous relationship between marital status and labor participation for urban samples. For rural samples, marital status is not an endogenous variable for labor participation, so the endogenous analysis of the following is based on urban samples. The regression results of the two-step IV Probit model show that the negative impact of married status on labor participation has been significantly greater after endogeneity has been controlled through the population sex ratio and revision of marriage registration regulations. This is closely related to the fact that many urban women nowadays are late married because of their education and career pursuit. Improving the labor participation of married women requires the improvement of the social public service system and labor market to alleviate the conflict between family and career for women.
This study uses the data from the 2014 China Longitudinal Aging Social Survey to investigate the elderly people’s old age concept and intention for old-age support of one-child families and multiple-child families respectively, mainly focusing on the determinants of their intention. The results show that the majority of the elderly still agree with the concept of “raising sons to support parents in their old age” and believe that the responsibility for providing care for the elderly should mainly be undertaken by children. Home support is still the most acceptable way for the elderly. Compared with the elderly from multiple-child families, the elderly from one-child families prefer to live independently and have lower expectations for their children’s elderly care responsibilities. However, they have higher demand for their children’s spiritual support and expect more support from the government and society. Personal factors and family factors jointly shape the elderly’s intention for old-age support, but they have different influences on the two types of elderly. From the perspective of personal factors, education level will more significantly affect the elderly’s intention for old-age support in multiple-child families, especially their attitude towards institutional care. From the perspective of family factors, for the elderly in one-child families, the spouse seems to play a more important role than the children, which has a more important impact on their intention for old-age support, while the elderly with spouse prefer to live independently. Having a son or not has an impact on both types of elderly people, but its significance is different. For the elderly of the multiple-child families, whether there is a son or not has a significant impact on the family decision, namely, raising a son or not determines whether they live in their own families or in their children’s families. For the elderly in one-child families, raising a son or not has a significant impact on the elderly care choice between family and society.
As the acceleration of population aging in China, the power of demographic dividend to drive the economic growth has gone. The decisions of quitting the labor market which do not make the best use of human capital, such as early retirement, have become an important factor that restricts economic development in China. From the perspective of domestic division of labor, based on data of CHARLS in 2011, 2013 and 2015, this paper uses the instrumental variable method to analyze the causality between caring for grandchildren and the decision of early retirement. The study found that caring for grandchildren significantly increased the risk of early retirement by about 18.8% and significantly advanced the retirement age by about 1.4 years for middle-aged and elderly people, and found that the index of subjectively reported early retirement has serious measurement bias. We also found that the effect is stronger for women with one child and lower education level, who work in enterprises. Further discussion found that there was a significantly positive correlation between the salary of babysitting at community level and caring for grandchildren while providing grandchild care did not increase the probability of children’s economic transfer to their parents. Family grandchild care was still necessary under the condition of insufficient market care resources. This shows that the effectiveness of retirement age policy of gradually and flexibly delaying the statutory retirement age will be very limited. However, implementing inspiring tax policy and subsidy policies, and developing and perfecting the service market of caring can effectively alleviate the conflict between family care responsibilities and grandparents’ employment behavior of the labor market, which will ensure the implementation of the retirement policy that delaying the statutory retirement age.
The family is basic unit of society, and its development capability determines the level of the overall social development capability. The measurement of family development capability is the scientific premise for the formulation of family development policies. This paper constructs the index system of family development capability, measures the family development capability in China, and applies the coupling analysis method based on principal component analysis. The development index weight of each subsystem is obtained through principal component analysis, which makes up for the defect of subjective assignment of first-level index in most coupling methods, and makes the coupling degree analysis more objective and reasonable. The result shows that the comprehensive index of Chinese family’s development capability has been rising steadily since the reform and opening up 40 years ago. At the same time, there is also an imbalance in the internal structure of family development. The three subsystems of family economy, population reproduction development and life development show great differences in the development process: the development capability of family economy and life continues to improve, while the ability of family population reproduction development gradually decreases. The coordination degree of the three sub-systems of family development capability rises first and then falls, and the decline of family population reproduction development capability affects the family development capability of China. The increasing coupling degree of the three subsystems of Chinese family development capability indicates that the interaction influence among the subsystems is strengthened. In the future, the country should focus on strengthening the reproduction capacity of the family, give more precise support to the family itself in education, medical care, old-age care, tax and other aspects, improve the internal imbalance of the family development capability, and promote the coordinated development of various subsystems so as to continuously and steadily improve the development capability of the Chinese family.
Based on D-S theoretical framework in new economic geography and spatial econometrics, the paper defines the spatial boundary of market potential of China’s labor market on the dual perspectives of wage and employment by constructing a multi-level regression model and using the provincial panel data and China Labor-Force Dynamics Survey (CLDS) micro-samples from 2012 to 2014. The study shows that, in the overall space, the market potential significantly raises the wage and employment, which brings double benefits to the labor market. In the local space, as the distance between provinces increases, it is difficult for the market potential to continuously exert its spatial effect on the labor market, and the boundary effect appears in a certain radius. In terms of grouping, from the perspective of geographical location, the market potential has the largest effect to raise wage in coastal areas, then the border and inland areas, and the improvement of employment in inland areas is the most remarkable. From the perspective of human capital , expanding market potential will narrow the wage gap between high and low human capital concentration and improve the employment of regions and groups with low human capital. However, the market potential has a classification effect on wage between high and low human capital groups. From the perspective of the mode of transportation,the geographical shrinkage effect generated by the development of high-speed rail further improves the marginal growth effect of market potential on employment. The marginal growth effect on wage of high-speed rail is relatively weaker than that of ordinary railways, but the gross effect is still positive. According to the above statement, reshaping the space by breaking through the effective boundary of market potential and spatial fix within the effective boundary can effectively adjust the gap of wage and employment caused by market potential differences between regions, and it will finally improve the efficiency of labor market.
