Demographic Responses to Economic Crisis: Determinants of Marriage and Fertility for Indonesian Youth 1993-2000

Jenna Nobles, University of California, Los Angeles
Alison M. Buttenheim, University of California, Los Angeles

Modernization theories suggest that industrialization and urbanization promote marital and fertility delays for young adults through increased educational and employment opportunities. Our research analyzes shifts in age at marriage and time to first birth in Indonesia following the 1998 South-East Asian economic crisis. Evidence suggests that the crisis disrupted long-term marriage trends; this study assesses the extent to which young adults' changing employment and education patterns following the crisis fostered this trend disruption. Data are from four waves of the Indonesia Family Life Survey, a longitudinal survey spanning 1993 to 2000. Preliminary results indicate significantly increased odds of marriage in 1998 and 2000 relative to 1993, and increased employment and decreased school enrollment for young adults in 1998. Future work incorporates hazard models with lagged education and employment covariates and fixed-effects panel studies to compare how education and employment status differentially affected demographic behaviors before and since the crisis.