The research proposed here is an empirical investigation of the links between female employment, age at marriage, and marital fertility in Peninsular Malaysia. Data for the study, which come in the form of individual retrospective event-histories of marriage, employment, and childbearing, are drawn from the 1976 Malaysian Family Life Survey (MFLS). The empirical analyses, which cover a range of substantive topics, are integrated in three ways: first, marital, employment and fertility transitions will be modelled within the common statistical framework provided by hazard models; second, careful attention will be given to the sample selection issues which arise because the sample of interest--the MFLS--is limited to ever-married women; and third, unobserved, person-specific variables will be brought into each of the analyses, using the random-effects approach. The study has both methodological and substantive aims. First among the methodological goals is the development of duration data estimators for age at marriage--hazard rate models--which take account of a sample selection rule, time- and age-varying covariates, and unobservables. The methods developed in the first stage of the research will be used to investigate the effect of female and male wage offers on female age at marriage within a two-state hazards framework, and, in a multiple-state context, to examine the effect of female employment experience on age at marriage and parity progression following marriage.
