A Case Study of Pakistan Determinants of Female Labour Force in South Asia Table 2: Number of children based on education levels of women, 2017-18 Education level No child Children aged less than five in the household Children aged between five and ten in the household No formal education(%) 64.16 58.67 71.17 Primary(%) 12.60 14.00 11.97 Secondary(%) 17.78 21.17 13.79 Tertiary(%) 5.45 6.19 3.07 Source: Author’s own calculation based on the results of LFS 2017-18 The other remaining variables are that of age, location, household size and sector of employment. As far as age variable is concerned, a better analysis would have been if age was divided into different categories and then see each category’s impact on the labour force participation probability. According to the official report on this survey, the participation rates are highest from the age group of 20-24 till 50-54 after which it starts decreasing for both genders though the difference in their participation percentage is massive (Government of Pakistan, 2017, p. 24). This is in line with the age(squared) variable which explains the slope and the negative value of 0.12% indicates that the probability of participation decreases with increasing age. Location also plays a significant role. Those belonging to whether a rural or urban area has a heterogenous impact. As the model estimates indicate that belonging to rural areas, reduces the participation probability by 76%. However, if this location variable is seen in relation with the levels of education, the results are different. For instance, individuals from rural areas and having primary levels of education have a 31.2% higher participation probability than those in urban areas with no formal education. Similarly, the probability increases massively for tertiary levels of education i-e 53.5% higher chances as compared to individuals from urban areas with no education. Household size is another important independent variable and an interaction term with female is used in this model. The variable describes the impact of household size on the female’s labour force participation probability. The coefficient of this variable i-e 0.008% indicates that the size of the household has insignificant impact on women’s decision to participate in the labour market. This result is in line with the other research findings(Azid et al., 2001; Hafeez& Ahmed, 2002). 44