Coresidence with Husband's Parents, Labor Supply and Duration to First Birth

C.Y. Cyrus Chu, Academia Sinica
Seik Kim, University of Washington
Wen-Jen Tsay, Academia Sinica

This paper investigates the time to first birth treating coresidence with husband's parents and labor supply as endogenous using representative data on Taiwanese married women born over 1933-1968. We utilize a full information maximum likelihood estimator for a duration model with endogenous binary variables. Results controlling for endogeneity suggest that both coresidence and working result in a delay of childbearing, reversing the effect of coresidence on the timing of first birth, but not that of working. We also find that women in earlier cohorts tend to choose coresidency and not working, but an increasing number of women from later cohorts choose to do both or work only.