How do womens education and career affect their decision on marriage and motherhood? A case study for Vietnam

Abstract

Nowadays, time to marry has been earlier among women in developing countries, and time of entry into first marriage has each particular effect on health issue of women and their children. However, there are not many researches focusing on this area, especially for the case of Southeast Asia countries. Therefore, this paper is designated for filling this gap, and I choose the case of Vietnam for analysis to investigate the association between social factors such as education, ethnic, religion, and income and on women’s first marriage and childbirth decisions. The dataset is established from a random online survey with 505 respondents including men and women, but the purpose of this paper is not suitable for men, then male’s respondents are automatically excluded from the dataset. Consequently, my sample consists of 304 women aged 18 to 66, which is divided into birth cohort in order to find whether there is any difference in marriage or rearing children among generations. Survival model analysis is applied to give the probability of getting marriage at a specific time of women’s life. The study found that educational level, income, time of first intercourse, promotion achievement have significant impacts on women’s marriage decision and fertility.