IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/chieco/v92y2025ics1043951x25000884.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Long-term consequences of fertility on elderly labor supply

Author

Listed:
  • Wang, Sophie Xuefei

Abstract

In recent decades, the Chinese demographic structure has been shaped by two major trends: population aging and declining fertility. This study examines the long-term impact of fertility on China's elderly labor supply. The use of instrumental variable methods with data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study dataset shows that having more children reduces labor supply among the elderly, especially for disadvantaged elderly, including females, those residing in rural regions, and those with low levels of education. The negative effect mainly impacts the extensive margin of labor supply rather than the intensive margin. This study excludes co-residence with adult children and taking care of grandchildren as potential factors contributing to the negative impact on the elderly's labor supply. The rise in net transfers from children, as the number of children increases, may explain the observed negative effect. This relation between fertility and elderly labor supply has significant policy implications.

Suggested Citation

  • Wang, Sophie Xuefei, 2025. "Long-term consequences of fertility on elderly labor supply," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:chieco:v:92:y:2025:i:c:s1043951x25000884
    DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2025.102430
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1043951X25000884
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.chieco.2025.102430?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:chieco:v:92:y:2025:i:c:s1043951x25000884. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/chieco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.