In this section, we examine, in a multivariate context, demographic responses to short-term economic stress and household resources, focusing on each of the four demographic behaviours: mortality, marital fertility, first marriage, and out-migration.
For each of these four behaviours, we estimate two sets of models. The first model includes only the rice price and time periods, in addition to the two control variables of age and village of residence.
In the second model, household landholding (net of number of kin household members) is added to the first model. We also estimated the models with interactions between rice price and landholding, as well as between time periods and price or landholding. We report the results of the models with interactions only when such interactions are statistically significant without over-specifying the model. Table 17.1 presents the means of the covariates used in the analysis of mortality, and Table 17.2 presents the corresponding descriptive statistics for the covariates used in the analyses of marital fertility, first marriage, and out-migration.5.1