Outsourcing for How Long? Factors and Duration of Employing Foreign Live-in Domestic Helpers

Abstract

A remarkable rise in outsourcing domestic labor has been well documented, but the scope of the existing studies is limited. This study aims at investigating the factors and duration of using live-in domestic help in Hong Kong. The study also aims at disentangling the cross-sectional patterns in using paid domestic help into two different patterns: differential risks in the transition into the practice and the differential risks in the transition out from the practice. This study analyzes retrospective life-history data from a representative household survey ( N = 2003). Discrete-time logit models were employed. The results show that employing live-in helpers is a stable practice that could last for more than a decade. Yet, the factors for using and ending the practice are different. The results show that the flexible outsourcing framework could satisfactorily explain the families employing live-in helpers but is less applicable in explaining the duration of the practice.