Parental Care and Self-Reported Health of Married Women: Evidence from Urban China

Lan Liu, Peking University
Xiaoyuan Dong, University of Winnipeg
Qiqing Chen, Central Party School of the Communist Party of China

Informal care is the primary elderly-support pattern in urban China, and women have taken the main responsibility of parental caregiving. With the data derived from China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) and ordered-probit model, we aim to examine the relationship between hours of parental care and self-reported health of married women in urban China. Our results show that married women would report much worse health if hours caring for parent-in-law increase, with the probability of “Excellent” and “Good” health reduced, and the probability of “Fair” and “Poor’ health increased. It is possibly concluded that traditional patrilineal familial norms still play a role in shaping intra-household allocation in urban China as hour burden of caregiving for parent-in-law would significantly strengthen married women’s mental stress whereas taking care of own parents not. We should pay more attention to the negative impact of increasing parental care burden on wellbeing of married women.