The Influence of Spouse’s Income on Married Women’s Labor Participation

Yiqi Yang

doi:10.54691/bcpbm.v15i.253

Abstract

Gender equality is a hot issue in today’s society, and economic independence is important for women to have more say in her family and the society. This paper examines the effect of spouse’s labor income on married women’s labor participation by using data of CGSS 2015. To give a clear comparison, the paper also examines the effect of wives’ labor income on married men’s labor participation. The result shows that the husband’s labor income share of total family income does have a significantly negative impact on married women, while the wife’s labor income share of total family income doesn’t have a significant impact on married men. Possible explanations and suggestions are proposed to deal with this phenomenon.

Highlights

1.1 Brief BackgroundDespite some progress made over the past few decades in increasing women’s labour force participation and narrowing gender gaps in wages, gender equality in the world labor market still remains an elusive goal
This study aims to find out how the husband’s income will influence the married women’s labor participation, which is a micro research based on the unit of household
A possible explanation is that if a family’s income is mainly composed of husbands’ and wives’ labor income, and if a wife’s labor income is relatively low but accounts for a bigger share of family income, the couples can’t sustain their life only with the wife’s income, as a result, the husband will go for work

Summary

Introduction

1.1 Brief BackgroundDespite some progress made over the past few decades in increasing women’s labour force participation and narrowing gender gaps in wages, gender equality in the world labor market still remains an elusive goal. What’s more, due to women’s socio-economic disadvantages caused by gender discrimination and their dual roles of being a worker and a care taker for the society, many women are more likely to take lower-level jobs or even forced to leave the labor market to take care of their families. This study aims to find out how the husband’s income will influence the married women’s labor participation, which is a micro research based on the unit of household. To give a more straightforward picture, I will study the influence of the wife’s income on the married men’s labor participation to make a comparison between the results of different gender under the condition of holding other factors fixed. This paper seeks to investigate the current gender equality situation in China and put forward some suggestions about policies of improving gender equality based on the result of study

Objectives

Results

Conclusion