The Effects of Migration Status, Motivation, and Direction on the Timing of the First Birth among Indonesian Women

Muhammad Faizal, 1) Lembaga Demografi, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Indonesia
Elda Pardede, University of Indonesia

This paper investigates how migration status, motivation, and direction affect fertility, measured by the timing of the first birth. By utilising all five waves of the Indonesia Family Life Survey, the Proportional Cox Hazard Model results on all ever-married women show that migrant women have a smaller hazard of having their first birth than non-migrant women. Regarding the effect of migration motivation, we find that women whose first move was for working and educational reasons have a smaller hazard of having the first birth compared to women whose first move was for family reasons. Concerning the effects of the direction of migration, in most cases, women whose first move was to a different level of urban hierarchy, such as from village to city or city to village, tend to have their first birth slower than women whose first move was across villages. These results shed light regarding the linkage between migration and fertility, particularly the first birth, that it is not only the act of migration that affects fertility but also the motivation and the direction of migration.

Keywords: Fertility, Longitudinal studies

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