Ethnic minority group differences in the transitions from work to “retirement” of western China’s rural elders

Abstract

This chapter considers the work to “retirement” transitions of the rural elders in China who reside in seven regions with substantial minority populations. The data employed, those of the China Household Ethnicity Survey, are ideal for examining the effect of ethnic differences on this key lifecycle event, the reduction of market-oriented work with age. Membership in particular ethnic minority groups is used to proxy potential differences in the social and cultural norms around aging and caregiving. We find that beyond education, the strongest predictors of labor force participation for China’s rural elders are age, disability, widowhood, and ethnic minority status. The effects of ethnic minority group status on labor force participation are robust and the differences in participation among ethnic minority groups are sometimes large. It is thus misleading, in the analysis of the labor force participation of China’s rural elders, to simply dichotomize ethnic minority and majority (Han) group membership. Further careful research is needed to help understand the differences in perceptions of aging among China’s rural ethnic minority groups.