Educational Gradient in Childcare Time in China, Japan, Korea, Finland and the UK

Muzhi Zhou , University of Oxford
Ekaterina Hertog, University of Oxford
Man Yee Kan, University of Oxford

We analyse the relationship between parents’ education and childcare time in China, Japan, and Korea and select the latest data from the UK and Finland as a benchmark for comparison. We select couples with children from the newly harmonised time use data during the 2000s-2010s. We use seemingly unrelated regression linear models to show how couples jointly determine their childcare time. The educational gradients are similar across East Asian countries and are relatively weaker than that in the UK or even Finland. Mother’s and father’s education play different roles. The critical role of the father’s education in shaping the mother’s childcare time is found in Japan and the UK. We will incorporate reviews about the country-specific education system, gender and income inequalities, and returns to education to offer some explanations to these cross-country differences. This comparative approach sheds lights into how the various regime systems shape the intergenerational transmission process.

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 Presented in Session 55. Caregiving