Although migration of Muslims from the southernmost provinces of Thailand to Malaysia has a long history, research suggests that the intensity of this migration has increased in the past 10 years along with increased unrest in the provinces. This study examines how migration in the three southernmost provinces is affected by the ongoing unrest. Data are drawn from household probability surveys conducted in 2014 and 2016. An individual sample of 3,467 persons who were household residents at the 2014 survey was followed to see who remained in the household of origin or moved out two years later (2016 survey). Data on violent events from the Deep South Watch, an independent organization, were used to measure exposure to violence. Results from a multilevel analysis show that net of other characteristics at the individual, household, and village levels, individuals who live in a village in which a violent event occurred in the previous year are more likely to move out than those who live in a village with no violent event in the previous year. Findings suggest that in addition to the economic reasons that have long motivated migration from this area, violent events accelerate this migration.
Data from Malaysia on the reproductive goals of husbands and wives are analyzed to determine level of agreement, using new scale measures on preferences for number and sex of children as well as the conventional measure of desired number of children. The level of agreement between husband and wife varies considerably depending on the focus of analysis and the measure of agreement used. Overall aggregate agreement of men and women is high but lower for subgroups of the population, particularly among various ethnic groups. For marital partners, the agreement is much lower, especially on sex preferences. The level observed depends on whether the measure is identity of responses or an index of homogeneity which allows for couple concordance based on chance or common socialization factors. The views about the reproductive goals of one marital partner cannot with confidence be assumed to represent the views of the other.
Differentials in age at first marriage and being married more than once are discussed for a probability sample of West Malaysian currently married women 15-44 years of age. Both marriage ages and the incidence of multiple marriages vary greatly by race, place of current residence, wife's education, and husband's occupation; and the marriage variables are shown to have significant effects on the cumulative fertility of West Malaysian women. Early marriage leads to higher cumulative fertility and multiple marriages lead to lower cumulative fertility. Since the social groups with the highest proportions of early marriages are also those with the highest incidence of multiple marriages, the marriage variables explain some but not all of the variance in cumulative fertility for West Malaysian social groups. After adjustment for the effects of the marriage variables, rural Indian or Pakistani women still have the highest cumulative fertility and urban Chinese women with more than five years of schooling still have the lowest cumulative fertility.
During the early postwar years up to 1957, the three main races in Malaya - Malays, Chinese, and Indians - experienced some differences in their levels of fertility. The lowest fertility was recorded among the Malays, with Chinese and Indian fertility about 5 percent and 10 percent higher, respectively. The comparatively low fertility of the Malays was owing to the exceptionally high rate of divorce, which meant unstable marriages and shorter periods of exposure to the risk of childbearing.A fairly well-defined pattern of state differences in fertility levels is found to exist in Malaya. Briefly, fertility was on the high side in the northern states of Johore, Malacca, and Negri Sembilan, and on the low side in the northern states of Penanq, Kelantan, Perlis, Kedah, and Trengganu, with the central states of Perak, Selangor, and Pahang in the intermediate position.The usual rural-urban fertility differentials are seen to prevail in Malaya as a whole and in the smaller units at state levels. Finally, the three main races registered higher fertility in rural areas, and the greatest gap between rural and urban rates prevailed among the Chinese.
The first section of this paper is devoted to an analysis of some theoretical aspects of the Chinese system of reckoning ages, and the second section offers a method of collecting the age statistics of a Chinese population: A discussion of the errors found in the age returns and the unsuccessful measures taken to eradicate these errors in the Malayan censuses conducted prior to1957 leads to an appraisal of the method of collecting Chinese age data in the 1957 census.