The timing of marriage, fertility, and female labor force participation in Morocco

Type Conference Paper - Ninth Annual Conference of the Economic Research Forum, UAE
Title The timing of marriage, fertility, and female labor force participation in Morocco
Author(s)
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2002
URL http://www.mafhoum.com/press4/136S27.pdf
Abstract
Studying the impact of fertility on female labor force participation and the form that this participation takes is complicated by the fact that both fertility and participation arepotentially endogenous household decisions, requiring simultaneous estimation. Suchestimation is further complicated by the need to find appropriate instruments for fertility. Moreover, age at marriage (or the probability of being married at a certain age), which isan important determinant of both fertility and participation, may also be endogenous tothose decisions. In this paper, we estimate a structural model of labor force participation that distinguishes between different participation states (non-wage work, public wagework, private wage work, and unemployment) and that takes account of the endogeneity of the timing of marriage and fertility. We find that in Morocco, marriage is not a constraint on labor force participation, but the presence of children under six significantly reduces participation in wage work. However, this effect is significantly weaker in the public sector, which appears to be more accommodating than the private sector formothers with young children

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