The Timing of Marriage, Fertility, and Female Labor Forice Participation in Morocco

Ragui Assaad, University of Minnesota
Sami Zouari, University of Sfax

Studying the impact of fertility on female labor force participation and the form that this participation takes is complicated by the fact that both fertility and participation are potentially endogenous household decisions, requiring simultaneous estimation. Moreover, age at marriage, which is an important determinant of both fertility and participation, may also be endogenous to those decisions. In this paper, we estimate a structural model of labor force participation that distinguishes between different participation states (non-wage work, public wage work, private wage work, and unemployment) and that takes account of the endogeneity of the timing of marriage and fertility. We find that in Morocco, marriage itself is not a constraint on labor force participation, but the presence of children under six significantly reduces participation in wage work. This effect is significantly weaker in the public sector, which appears to be more accommodating than the private sector to mothers with young children.