Help comes with friction: parental Co-residence and labour supply in migrant households

This article examines how parental co-residence in the destination city is related to migrants’ labour supply. Using the 2018 China Migrants Dynamic Survey, the results show that parental co-residence is positively associated with migrants’ weekly working hours, and this relationship is mainly driven by relatively younger co-residing parents. To interpret the mechanism, the paper develops and estimates a structural time-allocation framework in which parents can substitute for household tasks but may also generate coordination costs within multigenerational households. The structural estimates suggest that parental assistance releases time for market work, while co-residence frictions partly offset these gains. Policy simulations further suggest that reducing household task burdens through market and community services may generate more stable labour-supply gains than relying only on family-based support. By linking empirical evidence with a structural time-allocation framework, this article contributes to the literature by showing that family support in migrant households is valuable but not costless, because parental co-residence simultaneously relaxes household task burdens and creates co-residence frictions.