Does Having More Children Affect Women's Informal Employment Choices? Evidence from China

With the relaxation of the One-Child Policy in China, women are likely to face more conflicts between childcare and work. How to boost the fertility rate and facilitate the female labor supply has become an urgent issue in China. With data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) 1993-2015, this study explored the impact of having more than one child on women's informal employment decisions using three-equation models. The models took into account the sample selection of working-age women in the labor force and the endogeneity of fertility decisions jointly. The results showed that women with more than one child were more likely to choose informal employment. The positive impact of having more children on women's probability of informal employment was different for each group. Notably, the positive impact was stronger for women with low educational attainment, rural hukou, and especially for rural-urban migrants. These results were robust to several alternative specifications. These findings suggest that with more children, women in China choose informal employment as a way of balancing work and family.