MODELLING MARRIED WOMEN LABOUR FORCE PARTICIPATION DECISION

Abstract

Married women, who form a large pool of the economically inactive population, are Singapore's best potential source of short term additional labour supply. So to effectively tap this source of additional labour supply, policy makers have to study and know the basis on which this group of women makes their decision to participate in the labour force. This paper thus attempts to analyse the factors that influence the decision-making process and to provide a model of married women labour force participation decision. According to the opportunity cost framework, married women's decision to participate in the labour force are determined not only by economic considerations but also by factors such as post marital status, age, level of educational attainment, number of children and availability of domestic help. In this paper, seventeen proxy explanatory variables are used for the empirical modelling. Such a set of explanatory variables could not have been possible without the rich data provided by the Household and Expenditure Survey (HES) 1987/88.