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Labor Force Participation of Married 

Women of Childbearing Age

Xuexuan Gao , Weifang Min 

 
Graduate School of Education, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China 

 

Abstract: In the context of the decline in working-age population and 

exhaustion of demographic dividend in China, how to increase the 

supply of labor has become an issue critical to economic development. 
Optimizing preschool education system and enhancing the accessibility 

of high-quality and low-cost pre-primary schooling help free married 

women from childcare, boost their labor force participation, and thus, 
augment the supply of labor. This study discovers that the labor force 

participation rate of women who enroll all their preschool-age children 
in kindergartens is 1.32 times that of those who do not do so; and that 

for working women, preschool attendance of all their kids can increase 

their working time by four hours per week. After classifying the sample 
according to the level of household income and type of Hukou 

(registered permanent residence), it finds that child preschool 
attendance can more significantly raise the employment probability of 

women from high-income families and more prominently increase 

working hours of those with rural Hukou. 

Best Evidence in Chinese Education 2023; 13(1):1671-1678. 

Doi: 10.15354/bece.23.ar028 

How to Cite: Gao, X., & Min, W. (2023). The effect of child preschool education on 

labor force participation of married women of childbearing age. Best Evidence in 

Chinese Education, 13(1):1671-1678. 

Keywords: Preschool Education, Married Women of Childbearing Age, Labor Force 

Participation, Working Hours 

 

 

 



Gao & Min. (Beijing). Child Preschool Education and Labor Force Participation of Married Women. 

BECE, Vol.13, No.1, 2023 1672 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

Correspondence to: Weifang Min, Graduate School of Education, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China. E-
mail: wfmin@pku.edu.cn  

Conflict of Interests: None. 
 

© 2023 Insights Publisher. All rights reserved. 

Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the 

Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 License 

(http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of 

the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed by the Insights Publisher. 

mailto:wfmin@pku.edu.cn
http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/


Gao & Min. (Beijing). Child Preschool Education and Labor Force Participation of Married Women. 

BECE, Vol.13, No. 1, 2023 1673 

 

The Background of the Study 

In the wake of the founding of the P. R. of China, the country established an equal em-

ployment system for men and women and provided a relatively complete childcare ser-

vice for preschool children to retain mothers in the workforce (Shi, 1999). Chinese 

women have maintained a relatively high level of labor force participation compared 

with their counterparts in other countries. However, the establishment of market-

oriented economy as a result of the nation’s reform and opening up impaired the pre-

school childcare system and pre-primary education was no longer provided as public 

welfare, which posed negative impact on women’s employment, especially the em-

ployment of those from low-income households, and made them less competitive in the 

labor market (Zhu & Wang, 2005). Researchers attempted to examine the relation be-

tween mothers’ devotion to childcare and their lower labor force participation and con-

firmed that mothers invest far more time and energy in taking care of the family and 

young kids than fathers, thus more likely to withdraw from the labor market (Xiong & 

Li, 2017). As a result, married women of childbearing age in China experienced a de-

cline in labor force participation due to the difficulty in balancing work and family; 

among them, those having children aged between 0 and 6 in homes were most signifi-

cantly affected, with their employment rate dropping from 90.3% in 1991 to 74.9% in 

2011 (Du, Zhang, & Dong, 2018). 

To improve female employment, China has made immense efforts to expand 

preschool education since 2010. By 2020, 48.1826 million children were enrolled in 

kindergartens; the gross enrollment rate of preschool education reached 85.2%. The 

scale and coverage of preschool education were close to the average level of OECD 

countries. The popularization of preschool education has made it accessible to a much 

larger population, especially to that in the underdeveloped regions in central and west-

ern China, and has freed more married women from the burden of childcare, enabling 

them to return to work after giving birth to a child. According to data from the World 

Bank, China witnessed a rapid decline in the labor force participation rate of its female 

population from 2000 to 2010, but the downward curve has levelled out since 2011, 

which can be attributed to the popularization of preschool education and the liberation 

of female labor force.  

With the loss of China’s demographic dividend and decrease in its fertility rate, 

adult women have become an important source of labor supply. Investigations into the 

influence of child preschool education on mothers’ employment are vital to the increase 

of the supply of labor in China. Utilizing data from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) 

2010-2018, this article undertakes empirical research on the effect of the popularization 

of preschool education on promoting labor force participation of married women of 

childbearing age in China.  

Data and Descriptive Statistics 

The Data Source 



Gao & Min. (Beijing). Child Preschool Education and Labor Force Participation of Married Women. 

BECE, Vol.13, No. 1, 2023 1674 

 

Data used in this study is sourced from the CFPS database, which samples from 25 pro-

vincial administrative regions. The wide coverage of the samples assures their repre-

sentativeness. CFPS are longitudinal surveys using the year of 2010 as the baseline with 

data of 2018 being the latest; altogether they provide data in 5 periods. This study fo-

cused on the labor force participation of married women with children aged between 3 

and 5, since the caring modes for kids in 0-2 age group are too diverse to be easily de-

fined. The sample of the study was made up of married women from 21 to 49 years of 

age with 3-5 years old children. After deleting subjects lacking core variables and ad-

ministering mean value interpolation to those lacking non-core variables, a sample of 

5364 women was obtained.  

Descriptive Statistics 

Descriptive statistics showed that the women sampled had 1.8 children each on average 

with a mean age of 30 years old and most of them were in good health according to 

their self-evaluation; that their labor force participation rate was 62% and those in em-

ployment work approximately 33.5 hours each week. Among the subjects having labor 

incomes, the logarithm of their average income was 9.31. In terms of education level, 

the average length of schooling of the women sampled was 8.45 years, which is approx-

imately junior secondary level, and only 12% of them received higher education (col-

lege or above). That means most of them had not experienced higher education. The 

impact of education level on employment might be underestimated in this study.   

 

The Relationships between Child Preschool Education 

and Maternal Labor Force Participation 

Child Preschool Education and the Labor Force Partic-

ipation Rate of Mothers 

The Measurement Model 

In this study, the dependent variable “being in employment or not” is a binary variable. 

The logit model was used to evaluate the effects of child preschool education on mater-

nal labor force participation instead of the linear probability model, because the latter 

may cause heteroscedasticity and produce estimate values of the dependent variable that 

are out of the interval [0, 1]. Also, the logit model can explain the change in the odds 

ratio caused by a one-unit increase in the explanatory variable. In addition, the year 

dummy variable was incorporated in the model to eliminate the gaps induced by year 

differences, as the sample entailed a group of cross-section data from different periods. 

The regression results demonstrated that child preschool education has a signif-

icant positive effect on maternal labor force participation. When all children in a family 

attended nursery schools, the mother’s employment probability is 1.32 times that of her 

counterpart whose children failed to receive preschool education. Calculation results of 



Gao & Min. (Beijing). Child Preschool Education and Labor Force Participation of Married Women. 

BECE, Vol.13, No. 1, 2023 1675 

 

the coefficient of the variable of grandparental care showed that for women from fami-

lies where elderly members provided childcare, the probability of their labor force par-

ticipation is 1.57 times that of those who could not get support from the elderly in terms 

of childcare. Prior work experiences were also an important factor determining whether 

a woman would rejoin the labor market; for those who have been formally employed 

for more than 6 months, the probability of resuming work was 3.66 times that of those 

without this experience. Rural women were more likely to resume labor participation 

after giving birth to a child than their urban counterparts. Furthermore, older women in 

better health conditions and from higher-income families are more likely to restart 

working. It is also worth noting that the analysis results did not show a significant effect 

of high education levels on women’s labor force participation as presumed, which may 

be due to the low proportion of women who have received higher education in the sam-

ple. 

Child Preschool Education and Labor Force Participation 

of Women from Distinct Economic Backgrounds  

It was presumed that the effect of child preschool education on maternal employment 

varied among families of different economic status. In this study, annual household in-

come was used as the criterion to classify and analyze the heterogeneity of the sample. 

Based on the logarithm of the annual household income, this article divided the sample 

into three categories: women from low-income, middle-income, and high-income fami-

lies. The regression results showed that regardless of family income levels, child pre-

school education had a significant effect on promoting maternal labor participation, and 

that the higher the household income level, the stronger the promotion effect.  

The results of calculation of the correlation coefficients revealed that, the prob-

ability of maternal employment in low-income families after children enrolled in nurse-

ry schools was 1.34 times that before children attended kindergartens. For middle-

income and high-income families, the probability of maternal participation in the labor 

force after their children received preschool education was 1.44 and 1.49 times that be-

fore their children’s kindergarten attendance, respectively. With grandparental care for 

children, the employment probability of mothers in high-income families would in-

crease by 1.09 times, which was significantly higher than that in low- and middle-

income families 

The Robustness Test 

The logarithm of the cost of preschool education in the area where the subject lives was 

employed as instrumental variable to validate the impact of child preschool education 

on maternal resumption of work.  

Child preschool attendance is negatively correlated with the cost of preschool 

education. That is to say, the higher the cost of preschool education in a certain area, the 

weaker the family’s demand for it. The less affordable the child preschool education, 

the more likely it is for the mother to withdraw from labor force. Therefore, the instru-

mental variable is negatively related to the endogenous variables, which means that in 



Gao & Min. (Beijing). Child Preschool Education and Labor Force Participation of Married Women. 

BECE, Vol.13, No. 1, 2023 1676 

 

the first phase of regression, the coefficient of the instrumental variable should be nega-

tive, while in the second phase of regression, the coefficient of the explanatory variable 

after fitting the instrumental variable should be significantly positive as it is in the ini-

tial logit model.   

The regression results of the study showed that the coefficient of the instrumen-

tal variable was significantly negative in the first phase of regression and that the coef-

ficients of the endogenous explanatory variables are significantly positive in the second 

phase of regression. The Wald test and AR test on the instrumental variable demon-

strated that the instrumental variable was exogenous and valid, and no over-

identification occurred in the tests, which satisfied the requirements for the instrumental 

variable. By introducing the instrumental variable of the cost of preschool education, 

this study verified that child preschool education could significantly promote the labor 

force participation of married women. 

Child Preschool Education and Maternal Working 

Hours 

The Measurement Model 

Child preschool attendance can also pose impact on working hours of women in em-

ployment. As working mothers have to balance between childcare and work, they can 

have more discretionary time and work for longer if their children are taken care of by 

preschool education institutions. After having screened the sample to identify women 

who reported effective working hours, this study obtained 2,275 subjects for the ensu-

ing analysis. Women’s effective working hours per week are basically normal distribu-

tion, and thus OLS regression can be applied. The regression on the full sample demon-

strated that women whose preschool-age children were enrolled in kindergartens 

worked 4 more hours per week than those whose preschool-age children did not attend 

nursery schools. 

The Heterogenous Effects of Child Preschool Education 

on Women with Different Types of Hukou 

According to the regression results, sending children to preschool education institutions 

could significantly increase the working hours of rural women by 3.4 hours per week. 

Grandparental care for children had a greater effect on the weekly working hours of 

rural women than those of their urban counterparts, probably due to the fact that the 

high charge or poor availability of rural preschool education institutions makes rural 

women more reliant on the childcare provided by grandparents. In addition, rural wom-

en with the labor force type of “being employed” may participate in off-farm work 

aside with agricultural production, which means that they work longer hours than their 

urban counterparts in the same job. 

 



Gao & Min. (Beijing). Child Preschool Education and Labor Force Participation of Married Women. 

BECE, Vol.13, No. 1, 2023 1677 

 

The Heterogenous Effects of Child Preschool Education 

on Women with Different Numbers of Children 

The regression results showed that child preschool education had the greatest impact on 

the working hours of mothers with only one child, increasing their weekly working time 

by 5.1 hours; and that it also has a positive effect on the working hours of mothers with 

more than one child, which were raised by 3.1 hours each week. Moreover, the mother 

with more than one child could increase her working hours only when all her children 

were enrolled in nursery schools; otherwise, she would strongly depend on the childcare 

provided by the elderly in the family. 

Conclusions 

Focusing on the effect of child preschool education on labor force participation of mar-

ried women of childbearing age in China, this study discovered that the mother can be 

freed from childcare when preschool service is available to all her preschool-age chil-

dren, which considerably increase her employment probability. This positive effect is 

the most prominent among women from high-income households, probably due to their 

strong willingness and capability of resuming their career. After enrolling their children 

in preschool education institutions, women employed, especially those from rural areas, 

can increase their working time, which, as a result, boosts the supply of labor for the 

whole society. Currently, in most Chinese families, grandparental care for young chil-

dren remains a vital source of support for mothers’ rejoining the labor force. 

However, as a result of the dwindling family size and the introduction of de-

layed retirement policy in China, the burden of childcare will be shifted back to mothers 

and discourage them from resuming work, thus reducing the total supply of labor force. 

Hence, the development of preschool education becomes crucial to relieving married 

women of the burden of childcare, reducing the opportunity cost of their employment, 

and encouraging their labor force participation. Improved maternal employment can 

further enhance the efficiency of human resource allocation, promote economic growth 

and at the same time bolster gender equality in Chinese society. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The impact of childcare on labor force partic-

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hood education in the People’s Republic of 

China (I): Early childhood education in the 

Socialist Transformation Period (1). Early 

Childhood Education, 1999(10):4-5 

Xiong, R. X, & Li, H. W. (2017). Childcare, 

public service, and non-farm labor force par-

ticipation of Chinese rural married women: 

Evidence from CFPS data. China Economic 

Quarterly, 16(1):393-414.  



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BECE, Vol.13, No. 1, 2023 1678 

 

Zhu, J. & Wang, C. (2005). Contemporary early 

childhood education and research in China. 

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Information Age Publishing

.

 

 

 

The Chinese version of this article has been published in Journal of Peking University Education 

Review, 20(2):17. The English version has been authorized for being publication in BECE by the 

author(s) and the Chinese journal. 

 

高雪姮 & 闵维方. (2022) 学前教育对婚育女性劳动参与的影响. 北京大学教育评论, 20(2): 

17. 

 

 

Received: 27 December 2022 

Revised: 05 January 2023 

Accepted: 12 January 2023 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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