Volume 29, Number 4 (Fall) 1994
Brien, Michael J., and Lee A. Lillard. 1994. "Education, Marriage, and First Conception in Malaysia." Journal of Human Resources 29(4):1167-1204.
This paper examines cohort and ethnic differences in education, the timing of marriage, and the timing of first conception for women in Peninsular Malaysia. We examine the roles of education and enrollment in delaying marriage and first conception and dropping out of school. We focus on the joint nature of these decisions by controlling for the endogeneity of one outcome as it affects the others. Changes in education and enrollment account for a substantial portion of the cohort trend toward later marriage in Malaysia. Further, most of the rise in the age at first conception across cohorts and ethnic groups is fully accounted for by cohort and ethnic differences in the age at marriage.
Michael J. Brien is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Virginia. Lee A. Lillard is a senior economist at RAND. This research was supported by NIA grant no. R37-AG08346, NICHD grant no. P50-12639, and an NIA Post-Doctoral Training grant. The authors wish to thank Christine Peterson for insights into the MFLS-2 data. They also acknowledge helpful comments from Gavin Jones and Constantijn Panis. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning in 1995 through 1998 from Lee A. Lillard at RAND, 1700 Main Street, Santa Monica, CA 90401.
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