China is undergoing profound demographic transformation characterized by persistently low fertility and rapid population aging. In response, the central government has introduced a series of pro-natalist policies aimed at promoting long-term demographic balance, with increasing attention to the multidimensional determinants of household fertility decisions. Among these determinants, time has emerged as an increasingly scarce and consequential resource in the cost-utility calculus of childbearing, particularly under the contemporary context of prolonged working hours in dual-earner households. As labor market competition intensifies and long working hours become normalized, household time resources are further compressed, potentially reshaping couples' fertility intentions and long-term family planning strategies.
Current research on the fertility-inhibiting effects of overtime work often lacks a family perspective, neglecting the fact that fertility decisions are fundamentally household-level choices shaped by intra-household interactions and joint time allocation. This study advances the literature by shifting the unit of analysis from individuals to couples and examining how different patterns of household overtime work influence fertility intentions through intra-household time coordination mechanisms and external time substitution.
Drawing on data from the 2024 Sampling Survey on China's Population and Family Development, this study constructs a typology of household overtime work patterns based on both spouses' working-hour arrangements and employs Logistic regression models to examine the impact of household overtime work patterns on individual fertility intentions, with particular attention to gender heterogeneity. In addition, we further explore the coordination mechanisms of intra-household time resources, and estimate the effect of marketization level of childcare services as a form of external time substitute from a family perspective.
The results reveal three main findings. First, household overtime work exerts a significant fertility-inhibiting effect, but the magnitude varies by overtime work configuration. Second, gender differencesare pronounced. Women's fertility intentions are more sensitive to household overtime work arrangements, reflecting gender asymmetry in domestic labor responsibilities and time allocation. Third,marketization level of childcare services has only a limited mitigating effect. It only shows significant effects among single-overtime work households, yet is invalid in dual-overtime work households.
This study makes several contributions. Conceptually, it introduces a household-level analytical framework that integrates time allocation theory and gender role theory to explain how cumulative overtime work generates structural time scarcity within families. Methodologically, it operationalizes household overtime work patterns as interactive configurations rather than individual behaviors and explains the mechanism through which overtime work affects fertility decisions from the perspective of reallocation of domestic responsibilities and changes in time allocation between spouses within the family.
These findings suggest that excessive working hours undermine fertility intentions by generating cumulative time scarcity within families and intensifying gendered inequalities in domestic responsibilities. Policies aimed at promoting fertility should therefore move beyond financial subsidies or childcare expansion alone and pay greater attention to working-time regulation, labor market flexibility, and the protection of family time resources. By emphasizing the family dimension of overtime work, this study provides new evidence for understanding the time mechanism of low fertility in contemporary China and for designing more effective family-friendly and fertility-supportive labor market institutions.
