Female Labor Force Participation and Fertility: A Survey Based Study of Southern Punjab, Pakistan

Abstract

Rapidly increasing population is challenging for almost all the developing countries which triggers the issues like poverty, ill-health, illiteracy, lower living standard and environmental degradation. Female participation in labor force may increase the opportunity cost for bearing and rearing children. This increased opportunity cost for having children may put pressure on families to have less number of children and offer more women time in labor market. This induces the women to allocate more time to work and develops their preferences to have less number of children. However, taking the 400 respondents as sample size, this study was conducted in Multan division, known as area of southern Punjab, Pakistan. Keeping in view the non-negative nature of dependent variable, this study used Negative Binomial Model to find out the relationship between fertility and female labor force participation. The estimates of the model indicates that monthly income of wife, education and use of birth control devices are major factors lessening the fertility rate of females. However, this mechanism for lowering demand for children by family may be helpful in reducing fertility rate (number of children per women) and increasing economic activity and wellbeing by involving more and more women in paid work. In this way, a society can achieve the targets of birth control in an invisible way to impede the pace of undesirable population growth. Finding of proposed research may help population welfare department, Punjab and Pakistan Population council, provincial and federal government in formulating an indirect and invisible population/birth control policies to overcome the burden of over-population.