Family power structure and women’s subjective well-being: evidence from China

ABSTRACTGrounded in the identity-behaviour theory, the research examines the relationship between family power structure and married women’s subjective well-being (SWB). Utilizing a sample size of 6,924 from the China Family Panel Studies in 2014, our investigation, employing both the OLS and ordinal logit models, reveals that a wife’s SWB is dependent on her husband’s predominant role in significant family matters. To mitigate potential endogeneity concerns, we apply the instrument variable approach to ensure the robustness of our findings. Our results underscore that this dependence effect is particularly prominent among those women adhering to traditional gender beliefs (i.e. men dominate the outside and women the inside). These outcomes shed light on the prevailing influence of traditional cultural norms on the SWB of married women, thereby furnishing a foundation for government to formulate policies aimed at fostering women’s empowerment.KEYWORDS: Husband’s decisive roletraditional social normsCFPSsocioeconomic transformationwife’s SWBJEL CLASSIFICATION: J16D10O12 AcknowledgementI would like to sincerely thank the three anonymous referees and the editor for their very constructive comments and helpful suggestions. I am immensely thankful to my cherished daughter for offering me precise inspiration. A significant portion of the family and gender studies series I am presently engaged in is greatly indebted to the motivation she has instilled in me and my anticipation of her.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 According to the third NSWSS in 2010, a substantial proportion of women, 74.7%, 72.5%, and 74.4%, indicated active involvement in household loan decisions, household business decisions, and house purchase decisions, respectively.2 Furthermore, according to the CGSS 2015 survey, about 59% of women express agreement with the idea of men pursuing careers while women attend to family chores. Similarly, this perspective garnered support from approximately 58% of women in the NSWSS 2010 survey.3 Highlighting men’s dominant role in crucial family matters, men traditionally bear the responsibility of providing for the family, while women are typically tasked with caring for their husbands and managing the household.4 No distinction arises when employing the 50th percentile value of Gender_belief as the threshold, and the same holds true for Family_status.Additional informationFundingThe work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [42001118]; Advance Research Fund for Humanities and Social Sciences of Zhejiang University of Technology [SKY-ZX-20220243]; Zhejiang University of Technology Foundation [GB202301003]; Zhejiang Provincial Philosophy and Social Sciences Planning Project [22GXSZ070YBM].