Children's Economic Contributions in Peninsular Malaysia

This Note explores economic contributions that children make to parents while living in parent households. A better understanding of resource flows from children to parents may provide the key to several Third World demographic puzzles, perhaps even to the nature and cause of demographic transitions. The body of the Note concentrates on labor market activities among unmarried children living with their parents. Appendix tables provide additional results for broader time use measures including unpaid family work and housekeeping. Each time use measure is analyzed along three dimensions: a participation decision, hours worked conditional on participation, and a Tobit analysis of parent demand for children's hours. An exploration of children's wages is also given. Results suggest that children's work activities are an important source of family welfare even in a relatively developed country such as Malaysia. They also bring into question a number of common perceptions about children's time use.