Work Patterns Following a Birth in Urban and Rural China: A Longitudinal Study

Two waves of data (1989 & 1991) from the China Health & Nutrition Survey (CHNS) are used to investigate the short-term impact of a birth on women's work patterns. Defining work broadly in terms of involvement in income-earning activities in general, births have little impact. Defining work in terms of wage employment, births have a significant although modest negative effect. Substituting a more fully elaborated typology of work patterns that distinguishes different combinations of wage work, work in household businesses, & agricultural fieldwork makes it possible to look at shifts within as well as between categories of wage & non-wage employment. These shifts turn out to be important, especially in rural areas where such work predominates. In this study, the effect of a birth depends on how work is conceptualized & measured. Some of the contextual variability in the strength of the fertility-work relationship reported in the literature may be due to the particular measures of work that have been used, which better reflect the time demands, intensity, flexibility, & location of work in urban industrialized settings than in rural, less industrialized ones. 4 Tables, 1 Figure, 1 Appendix, 44 References. Adapted from the source document.
JOUR
Entwisle, Barbara
Chen, Feinian
2002
European Journal of Population
18
2
99-119
0168-6577
10.1023/A:1015507114559
136