The externality of her retirement – evidence from China

ABSTRACT

While women are more active in the labour force than ever, they are still doing most of the housework. Despite the important roles that women play in both the workplace and family life, limited literature has examined the health impact of women’s labour force status on their spouses. Using data from the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS), this paper estimates how women’s retirement affects their spouses’ subjective health. To this end, we implement a regression discontinuity design. The results indicate that the retirement of women imposes a negative externality on their husbands’ health.

KEYWORDS:

• Women
• retirement
• health
• externality

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• J26
• I18

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

¹ Female cadres refer to female civil servants working in the government, public institutions, and state-owned enterprises.

² See details in Table A.5.