This project will examine labor outcomes over the life course of men and women in Indonesia and Malaysia using retrospective life history data collected in three waves of the Malaysian Family Life Survey (MFLS) and two waves of the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS). In addition to distinguishing life-cycle from cohort effects over the last quarter- to half-century in these rapidly developing countries, particular attention will be paid to how economic and social change affects the lives of different socio-economic groups and also to changes in the importance of inter-generational mobility. Specially collected data from the IFLS provide a unique opportunity to carefully evaluate long-term retrospective histories on wages and labor supply in a dynamic setting. In addition to informing our research, the results of that sub-study will be of general methodological interest in and of themselves. A key factor affecting the well-being of a population is health. The richness of health status measures in the MFLS and IFLS will be exploited to examine the relationship between labor market success and a broader array of health indicators than has hitherto been possible using survey data. Both sets of surveys contain information on multiple family members and, in the MFLS, health status is reported for the same individual early in life along with health status of family members across three generations. Regression models will use all this information to control for individual-and family-specific health """"""""endowments"""""""" and to examine the influence of early childhood health on labor market outcomes later in life. By exploiting the panel dimension of the IFLS, we will examine the impact on labor market outcomes of not only current health but also previous health and changes in health status, neither of which has been studied in this context. Recognizing that health may be endogenous, an instrumental variables approach will be explored with the instruments being drawn from specially collected community-level survey data on prices, health services and infrastructure. Changes in the health insurance market in Indonesia will also be explored.
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