Work and private life represent two major areas of modern life. Work taking place in the labor market is a fundamental way for people to satisfy their basic needs, improve their living standards and fulfill their self-value; comparatively, family life and personal leisure in the private realm, including health, family, migration, consumption, entertainment and child care, are to satisfy people’s needs for spiritual contentment, rest and leisure. Given the present-day socioeconomic development, workers demand better working conditions and living standards. However, with greater work stress and family care responsibilities and increasingly blurred boundaries between work and family, labor and leisure, economic and social values caused by information network-based jobs in modern society, workers are confronted with increasingly prominent work-life conflict. How to keep a work-life balance has become an important societal problem.

This book will examine work-life balance under the lens of labor relation evaluation, given the fact that existing studies on labor relations have limitations like a lack of evaluation indicators for the growth in rights and interests of laborers, little attention on the private life of laborers and insufficient interest in non-physical workers. Based on an analysis of the current status and characteristics of workers’ work-life balance, this book devotes its first issue to what impact regional and occupational segmentation have on workers’ work-life balance. Regional and occupational segmentations represent an aggregation of the market, power and institutional structures: mental workers tend to have higher occupational prestige, income and educational levels compared with the physical worker group; workers from developed regions may enjoy advantages in terms of working conditions, employee life, employee benefits, work autonomy and work-life balance planning. Thus, building upon our interpretations of regional and occupation advantages and inter-class inequality, we attempt to analyze whether there is a gap in work-life balance among workers. Second, this book also tries to devise a more sophisticated explanatory framework for work-life balance jointly determined by external conditions, work- and life-related factors.  The questions raised in this research include: What impacts do external environmental factors like the provision of labor security and employment opportunities have on work-life balance? Do work-related factors like the active level in community activities affect work-life balance? Against the background where the control over labor process shifts from a time-oriented mode towards an efficiency-oriented mode, is workers’ work-life balance still influenced by working time? We selected external environmental factors like region, labor security, employment opportunity, life-related factors like commuting time, participation in community and social activities, and work-related factors like occupation, work support and stability to examine the mechanisms by which they influence work-life balance. The third theoretical issue addressed by this book is the historical evolution and development characteristics of people's values on work-life balance, due to the fact that changes in values may affect people's cognition and practices concerning work-life balance. In the final section, this book provides a comparative analysis of the developments in social policies regarding work-life balance in Europe and China. In China, social policies and institutions still leave much room for improvement in aspects of flexible work arrangements, flexible work planning, household subsidy, tax exemption, family care leaves, respite care, babysitting services and work-family consultation. Then, how should we draw on the advanced experience of western policies in order to formulate social policies on work-life balance adapted to China’s situation?

To answer that question, we implemented a working conditions survey. Using nationwide workers as the sample population, we conducted a sample-based survey of the overall working conditions for workers and measured their perceptions towards work-life balance using the awareness indicators widely applied in psychology. Our analysis of the first two theoretical questions was mainly based on the data of working conditions survey, which was processed using methods like descriptive analysis, t-test, chi-square test, multi-level logistic regression and binary logistic regression. In the analysis of the last two theories, our review of the historical values concerning work-life balance was mainly based on a retrospect of literature data; while the presentation and comparison of social policies on the work-life balance between China and the west is mainly based on an analysis of policy texts.

This book mainly presents 6 arguments and conclusions. First, the overall external environment has a relatively significant impact on workers’ work-life balance. External environment conditions are mainly reflected by region, protection of labor rights and interests and employment opportunities. Particularly, region characterizes the overall economic, social and cultural differences; in the meantime, regional differences also cause variations in working conditions - for instance, workers in the eastern region boast a better work-life balance in various aspects than their counterparts from the western region. Thus, efforts should be concentrated on improving the working conditions of workers from the western region. The provision of labor rights and interests and employment opportunities encourages workers to exercise their rights to breaks and leaves, improves workers' bargaining power and thus plays a positive effect on their work-life balance. Second, occupational segmentation fails to produce much influence on workers’ work-life balance. Under the classification of physical and mental workers, it was not found that worker groups had any difference in work-life balance. The most important implication of this finding is that mental workers do not have a higher work-life balance as a result of a higher position in the labor market and social status, and that they are also confronted with a tension of labor relations. Third, the control of working time, the aspect that we are most interested in, still has a significant impact on workers. Extended working hours have a negative effect on workers under both fixed and flexible working time systems. Fourth, life-related factors significantly influence work-life balance. Satisfaction concerning participation in community and social activities influences work-life balance. This may be attributed to the fact that participation in community activities helps relieve work stress, increase leisure enjoyment and improve the quality and satisfaction of life, producing a positive spillover from the life to work arena; on the other hand, participating in community and social activities enables a formation of work-first concept, facilitating individuals to acquire a sense of well-being from participation instead of job reward, thereby positively influencing work-life balance. Fifth, as can be seen from our review of the historical developments in the values of work-life balance, the values and concepts on work-life balance are mostly manifested by the relationship between work and leisure, which entails both tradeoffs and integrative convergence, as well as both conflicts and balances. From ancient times to the modern industrial society, there have been both the state of leisure worship and labor taboo, and the concept of work first and leisure inhibition. The conditions for their conflict and balance can be interpreted differently under different values. Sixth, our comparison of social policies concerning work-life balance in European countries and China reveals different development paths and points of interest. The formulation of policies, laws and regulations relating to work-life balance often bears or reflects common social demands across different countries and regions. Such demands represent the ground for the formation of policies, as well as a fundamental background for relevant policies and institutions. Social policies on work-life balance are mainly reflected in five aspects: working hours reduction, flexible work, rest and leave, support for work-family balance and work and leisure/health balance. For more than half a century's development, a well-balanced social policy system concerning work-life balance has been established in developed countries in Europe. China's work-life balance policies are mainly concentrated on working hours reduction and rest/leave policies. Given the fact that Chinese workers’ average weekly working hours are much higher but the annual holiday time is much lower than those of Europe, there is much room for improvement. The suggestions proposed in this book are as follows: incorporating work-life balance into the category of labor relations evaluation; focusing on the work-life balance of mental workers; closing regional gaps and improving the employment environment; improving workers’ employment stability and bargaining power; reducing working and communizing time; encouraging participation in community and family activities; and improving the policy system concerning work-life balance.