FEMALE LABOUR FORCE PARTICIPATION AND TOTAL FERTILITY RATE: NEW EVIDENCE FROM ASEAN COUNTRIES

This paper made an attempt to empirically examine the relationship between female labour force participation (FLFP) and total fertility rate (TFR) in 5 ASEAN countries, namely, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. This paper employed the panel data analysis to examine the relationship between 2 variables. The main findings of this paper are that there exists a long-run equilibrium relationship between female labour force participation and total fertility rate. The findings also indicate that there is no causal relationship between them, except that the number of children is a cause of change in female labour force participation in ASEAN the long run.