Transformations  in
Business & Economics

WHAT ARE REASONS OF THE SIGNIFICANT CHANGE IN THE CHINESE FEMALE LABOUR FORCE PARTICIPATION RATE? ANALYSIS ON INFLUENCING FACTORS BASED ON THE MACROSCOPIC TREND¹
Manxue Chen, Liyuan Qin, Chuanzhe Zhao

ABSTRACT. The female labor force participation rate (FLFPR) is an important measurement indicator of females' position in the society and market. In recent years, the Chinese FLFPR has significantly changed from the original drop to rise. In order to investigate the reason of the overall labor supply trend of Chinese urban females at the macroscopic level, this article researches the influencing mechanism of the macro-trend change in the labor supply of Chinese urban females based on the development laws of the labor market. Reasons of the change in the Chinese FLFPR are explored with several methods, such as grey correlation analysis of time sequence data and co-integration analysis of the autoregressive distributed lag model. It is found through research that family factors, changes in the overall educational level as well as inter-period labor market characteristics and marriage market conditions have strong explanatory power for the significant change in the FLFPR.

KEYWORDS:  female labor force participation rate, labor market, family supply, human capital, China.

JEL classification:  E24, J12, J21.

¹Acknowledgement:  This research is supported by Ministry of Education of China Youth Project of Humanities and Social Sciences (Project No.20YJC790011).