Changes in Work-Family Conflict of Chinese Employees: A Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis, 2005–2016

With the rapid growth of China's economy, work-family conflict (WFC) level of Chinese employees might have changed over time. The present research performed a cross-temporal meta-analysis of 71 papers using the Work-Family Conflict Scale (WFCS) from three Chinese academic databases and three databases in English to investigate changes in Chinese employees' WFC (N = 23,635) during 2005–2016. Results showed that the WFC level of employees increased significantly by 0.77 standard deviations over the past 12 years. The increasing trend over time occurred among both male and female employees, which is slightly more salient among male employees. However, there was no significant gender difference in WFC scores. This study found that the increase in WFC scores among Chinese employees was associated with scores of six social indicators that might cause stress in workplace (the number of employees and number of college graduates) and stress in family (divorce rate, residents' consumption level, elderly dependency ratio, and family size) of 5 years before and the year of data collection, which indicates that social changes played an important role in changes of WFC. The explanations and implications of these changes are discussed.