Determinants of fertility in Malaysia and selected ASEAN countries: The panel ARDL approach

• Main Authors: Abu Bakar, Nor'Aznin, Abdullah, Norehan, Abdullah, Hussin
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: HQ The family. Marriage. Woman
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/12315/1/2809141220.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/12315/; http://www.internationalconference.com.my
• Institution: Universiti Utara Malaysia

The main purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between fertility and female labour force participation rate in Malaysia and Selected ASEAN countries namely, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam. Specifically, female labour force together with other determinants such as health expenditure, life expectancy at birth, female self-employed and primary education are used to analyze their effects on fertility. Using a panel data for the period of 1995-2009, a fertility model is constructed based on the long-run and short-run analysis. Pearson correlation is used to examine the degree of linear dependence between variables. Results obtained show that there are positive and negative correlation between regression variable in these countries. The highest positive correlation is between health expenditure (he) and life expectancy at birth, while a negative correlation is found between health expenditure (he) and female self-employed. The panel unit root test is also employed to test for the stationarity of all variables. The results of the panel unit root tests show that all variables are non-stationary at level. Next, the panel ARDL tests - pooled mean group (PMG), mean group (MG) and dynamic fixed effects (DFE) show that the three variables; life expectancy (le), primary education (ep) and labour force participation (lp) are statistically significant in influencing fertility rate in the long run. At the same time, female self-employed (se) and health expenditure (he) are also statistically significant with lower value of 0.253 and -2,030 respectively. In the short run all variables are statistically significant in influencing the fertility rate except the health expenditure.