Malaysian Family Life Surveys (MFLS)

The MFLS comprise a pair of surveys with partially overlapping samples, designed by RAND and administered in Peninsular Malaysia in 1976-77 (MFLS-1) and 1988-89 (MFLS-2). Fieldwork for MFLS-1 was carried out by Survey Research Malaysia, Sdn. Bhd., and for MFLS-2 by the National Population and Family Development Board of Malaysia. Each survey collected detailed current and retrospective information on family structure, fertility, economic status, education/training, transfers, and migration and many other topics. Each survey also collected community-level data. The MFLS-1 sample consists of 1,262 households with an ever-married woman located in 52 communities that were selected to be representative of Peninsular Malaysia in 1976. MFLS-2 reinterviewed 926 of those MFLS-1 households (the "Panel" sample) and a subset of adult children from those original households (the "Children" sample). MFLS-2 also interviewed a new sample of 2,184 women age 18-49, regardless of marital status (the "New" sample), as well as a sample of 1,357 older Malaysians, age 50 and above (the "Senior" sample). The New and Senior data were drawn from 398 communities representative of Peninsular Malaysia in 1988. The MFLS data were described in the first FLS Newsletter (February 1994). Information on public release distribution and whom to contact if you have questions about the MFLS data are presented at the end of that newsletter. The MFLS-1 and MFLS-2 primary data are available in a sub-file format in which subsections of the survey questionnaire are stored in separate data files. The original MFLS-1 data was in a hierarchical format (i.e., a single file containing numerous record types) and was restructured to mirror the MFLS-2 file structure.An additional MFLS-1-based data file is also available. The MFLS-1 Individual-Level Dataset, created from the original MFLS-1 data, contains one record for each individual who ever appeared in the household roster of the MFLS-1 survey. Demographic, time allocation, and income and wealth information are available at both the individual and household level. The Individual level file is discussed in the second FLS Newsletter.