Determinants of labor force participation among older persons in Myanmar

Population ageing is occurring in many parts of the world. Likewise, in Myanmar, population is ageing with a fast acceleration. The government is trying to find ways to improve wellbeing of older persons, and labour force participation is one of the important factors to reduce financial insecurity during old age. This study aims to investigate the situation of labour force participation and to identify the demographic and economic factors that influence the decision making of older people to join the labour force in Myanmar. This study uses dataset from the 2012 Survey of Older Persons in Myanmar which is nationally representative. In the 2012 Survey, the sample consists of 4080 older persons aged 60 years and above. Data collection was designed by multi-staged random sampling method. Binary logistics regression is employed to examine the association between outcome variable of older persons’ labour force participation and various explanatory variables of demographic characteristics and financial security factors. This study investigates how the gender variation affects older persons’ labour force participation decision, so males and females are analyzed separately. Similar analyses are also conducted separately for rural and urban areas. The results show that 29.12 per cent of older persons worked during the 12 months prior to the interview. This study also finds that gender, age, physical health, residence, and sources of income (income from pension, support from children, relatives or non-relatives) are important factors which influence labour force participation of older persons. Furthermore, the results of this study reveal that there are both gender and residential differences, which significantly influence the decision regarding labour force participation of older persons.  Based on these findings, this study presents several policy recommendations.