TY - JOUR
T1 - Welfare Participation and Time Use in China
AU - Gao, Qin
AU - Wu, Shiyou
AU - Zhai, Fuhua
N1 - Funding Information:
The data used in this article are from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) funded by 985 Program of Peking University and carried out by the Institute of Social Science Survey of Peking University. We thank the funders and CFPS team members for providing the data which makes this study possible. We are grateful for very helpful comments offered by the editor, anonymous reviewers, Gordon Anderson, Thesia Garner, Björn Gustafsson, Jin Huang, Joachim Merz, Alice Nakamura, Sabrina Pabilonia, Dong Qiu, Dorothy Solinger, and other panelists and participants of the Plenary Session on Time Use and Well-Being of the 33rd General Conference of the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth (IARIW) in Rotterdam, the Netherlands on August 24–30, 2014 and the session on “Health, Nutrition, Education, and Life Opportunity for Children in Developing Countries: Are Social Policies Effective?” at the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) 2014 fall research conference on November 6–8 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We thank Yu Yang for excellent assistance in updating administrative data used in this study.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2014, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.
PY - 2014/11/29
Y1 - 2014/11/29
N2 - Using the newly available China Family Panel Studies 2010 survey data and a propensity score matching method, this study examines the possible influence of participation in China’s primary welfare program, Dibao, on household head’s time use pattern in both urban and rural areas. We find that Dibao lowered recipients’ time spent on various leisure and social activities and increased their time spent on unspecified activities or being idle for both urban and rural residents. Urban Dibao recipients also tended to spend less time on education activities, while rural Dibao recipients spent less time on work activities but more time on personal care and household activities. These findings provide pioneering evidence on the possible link between welfare participation and time use patterns in the global welfare literature. As Dibao continues to expand, the empirical evidence from this article suggests that Dibao might have some unintended adverse effects on recipients, including less time spent on leisure and social activities, reduced time on work and education activities, and more time on being idle. Future reforms of Dibao and its supplementary policies and programs need to consider how best to promote both the economic and holistic well-being of the participants.
AB - Using the newly available China Family Panel Studies 2010 survey data and a propensity score matching method, this study examines the possible influence of participation in China’s primary welfare program, Dibao, on household head’s time use pattern in both urban and rural areas. We find that Dibao lowered recipients’ time spent on various leisure and social activities and increased their time spent on unspecified activities or being idle for both urban and rural residents. Urban Dibao recipients also tended to spend less time on education activities, while rural Dibao recipients spent less time on work activities but more time on personal care and household activities. These findings provide pioneering evidence on the possible link between welfare participation and time use patterns in the global welfare literature. As Dibao continues to expand, the empirical evidence from this article suggests that Dibao might have some unintended adverse effects on recipients, including less time spent on leisure and social activities, reduced time on work and education activities, and more time on being idle. Future reforms of Dibao and its supplementary policies and programs need to consider how best to promote both the economic and holistic well-being of the participants.
KW - China
KW - Dibao
KW - Propensity score matching
KW - Time use
KW - Welfare participation
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U2 - 10.1007/s11205-014-0826-0
DO - 10.1007/s11205-014-0826-0
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84945476973
VL - 124
SP - 863
EP - 887
JO - Social Indicators Research
JF - Social Indicators Research
SN - 0303-8300
IS - 3
ER -