Family organization and married women's work experience in a developing society: Taiwan.

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to explore systematically married women's labor force behavior in the context of family organization and socioeconomic development in a developing society: Taiwan. Given that a great proportion of Taiwanese married women are working in the informal sector, this study has extended the traditional labor force participation studies by treating wives' work decisions as trichotomous choices--among formal employment, informal employment and not working--and by predicting wives' labor force behavior based on a microeconomic model. The main hypothesis is that the characteristics of the individual, family, and labor market may shape married women's labor force behavior. Among these factors, the factors of the family organization are most important in differentiating a wife's choice of formal vs. informal employment. The data are derived from the Taiwan Knowledge, Attitudes and Practice (KAP) fertility survey in 1980 which includes 3,859 ever-married women. Wives' formal vs. informal employment is measured along three dimensions: regulated vs. unregulated, familial vs. nonfamilial, and outside-home vs. at-home employment. The empirical analysis applies a multinomial logistic model to these trichotomous dependent variables. The results suggest that married women's work patterns in terms of formal vs. informal employment are a result of the division of labor by sex in both the family and the labor market. Wives from petty commodity production families are significantly more likely to work in informal employment, and this propensity does not vary with family life stage, family income, or job opportunities in the labor market. Wives also tend to work in the informal sector when they have small children, or when the family has a middle-level income. Wives' propensity to work informally due to the division of labor in the family is reinforced by the demands and constraints of Taiwan's labor market. The implication of wives' informal employment on the persistence of Taiwan's informal sector is discussed. The findings of the present study are compared with relevant research in the United States.