EMPLOYMENT’S ROLE IN ENABLING AND CONSTRAINING MARRIAGE IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA (original) (raw)

The gendered effects of labour market experiences on marriage timing in Egypt

Demographic Research, 2016

BACKGROUND In Egypt, the 'social problem' of delayed marriage is typically attributed to the difficult labour market conditions and high marriage costs faced by young people, particularly men. However, emerging evidence indicates that Egyptian women's employment experiences may also influence marriage timing. OBJECTIVE This paper investigates gender differences in the determinants of marriage timing, including employment history, job characteristics, education, and urban residence. It tests a number of hypotheses based on existing claims in the literature on marriage timing. METHODS Data from two waves of the nationally representative Egypt Labour Market Panel Survey are used to carry out proportional hazard analyses. Characteristics of nevermarried respondents at wave one in 1998 are used to predict the risk of marriage by wave two in 2006. RESULTS The results indicate that, to some extent, never-married men who have favourable labour market experiences marry earlier. The same experiences bear no association with women's marriage timing. For men, being employed and having a public sector job are important economic prerequisites for marriage. CONCLUSIONS Evidence indicates that Egyptian men with favourable labour market experiences attract a spouse and establish an independent household faster than others. The male breadwinner ideal is therefore a powerful force in dictating who marries when in Egypt today. I also contend that previous studies may have overstated the delaying effects of education and urban residence on marriage, particularly for women. Finally, I offer four

The Impact of Early Marriage on Women’s Employment in the Middle East and North Africa

Marriage is a central stage in the transition to adulthood in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). This paper builds on the existing literature on the effect of marriage on women's employment in MENA. Besides examining how different types of work are affected by early marriage (defined as marriage by the median age of marriage) in a multivariate setting, the contribution of this paper is to endogenize the marriage decision using an instrumental variable approach. We find that marriage by the median age reduces the probability of working for women by 47 percent in Jordan, 33 percent in Tunisia and 16 percent in Egypt. Much of the effect is due to a reduction in the probability of private wage work, which is reduced by 76 percent in Jordan, 57 percent in Tunisia and 40 percent in Egypt. Differences emerge across the three countries in the extent to which self-employment after marriage is available to women to compensate for the reduction in wage employment opportunities. JEL Classifications: J12, J16, J21, J45, J46, N35

Pathways to Marriage in Egypt: How Men’s Marriage Timing is Affected by their Labor Market Trajectory

There has been a great deal of concern in recent years about the rising age at marriage for young men in the Middle East and North Africa region. While the high cost of marriage has been documented for Egypt, there has been no evidence about young men's changing ability to afford these costs in a context of rising expectations for independent living arrangements at marriage. Using detailed life-course data from the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey of 2006, this paper analyzes the economic determinants of the timing of marriage for men by estimating a discrete-time hazard model with gamma frailty and a non-parametric baseline hazard specification. The key explanatory variables, each lagged 1, 3, and 5 years, are variables that indicate the onset of first employment and the timing of a "good" job, defined in relation to a job quality index for waged and non-waged workers. Findings from our estimations and simulation analysis indicate that the timing of marriage for young men is strongly affected by their labor market trajectory. 2

Transitions to employment and marriage among young men in Egypt

2010

We examine in this paper the transition from school to work and the transition to marriage among young men with at least a secondary education in Egypt, with particular attention to how the first transition affects the second. In examining the transition from school to work, we analyze the determinants of the duration of transition to first employment after school completion, as well as the type and quality of job obtained in such employment. We then move to an examination of the determinants of further mobility to a second job. In examining the transition to marriage, we investigate the effect of time to the first job and the time to the first good job, if any, on the timing of marriage, controlling for cohort of birth, education, family background and community-level variables.

Why are Iranian Youth Delaying Marriage? Labor Market Outcomes and the Timing of Marriage

This paper uses the Iranian School-to-Work Transition Survey (SWTS) to look at the impact that economic factors, and in particular youth labor market outcomes, have on the transition of youth to marriage. As studying this transition using the standard hazard model approach does not allow us to deal with the likely endogenous relationship between labor market and marriage outcomes, we suggest a new approach for modeling the transition of youth to marriage. In particular, we propose that marriage can be viewed as the observed counterpart of a latent continuous random variable and that techniques developed for analysis of dynamic probit models are thus appropriate for studying marriage. As these models are not designed to deal with the censoring that is endemic to analyses of marriage, we augment the standard dynamic probit model to correct for the censoring problem by using inverse probability weighting (IPW). The results presented in this study indicate that the impact of economic characteristics of individuals has, at most, a modest impact on the timing of marriage for Iranian youth.

The timing of marriage, fertility, and female labor force participation in Morocco

Ninth Annual Conference of the Economic …, 2002

Studying the impact of fertility on female labor force participation and the form that this participation takes is complicated by the fact that both fertility and participation are potentially endogenous household decisions, requiring simultaneous estimation. Such estimation is further complicated by the need to find appropriate instruments for fertility. Moreover, age at marriage (or the probability of being married at a certain age), which is an important determinant of both fertility and participation, may also be endogenous to those decisions. In this paper, we estimate a structural model of labor force participation that distinguishes between different participation states (non-wage work, public wage work, private wage work, and unemployment) and that takes account of the endogeneity of the timing of marriage and fertility. We find that in Morocco, marriage is not a constraint on labor force participation, but the presence of children under six significantly reduces participation in wage work. However, this effect is significantly weaker in the public sector, which appears to be more accommodating than the private sector for mothers with young children.

Marriage and Labor Market Transitions: A Structural Dynamic Model

This research investigates women's marriage and employment choices by esti-mating a joint dynamic model relying on data from the Egyptian Labor Market and Panel Survey (ELMPS) of 1998 and 2006 as well as a retrospective information from 1990. A major objective of this study is to disentangle the causal relationship between both decisions. For the employment decision, the model distinguishes be-tween four different labor market alternatives. These are inactivity, public, private and subsistence employment. This study infers new results with regards to state dependence and dynamic transitions among the different employment alternatives. The results show greater state dependence for the public than for the private sector. Also, significantly important transitions between the different employment status alternatives are observed. Married women working in the private sector tend to have higher probabilities to move to inactivity than women in the public sector, which goes in line wit...

The Economics of Marriage in North Africa

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2014

Marriage is the single most important economic transaction and social transition in the lives of young people. Yet little is known about the economics of marriage in much of the developing world. This paper examines the economics of marriage in North Africa, where asymmetric rights in marriage create incentives for extensive up-front bargaining and detailed marriage contracts. As well as describing the limited literature on the economics of marriage in North Africa, this paper draws on economic theories of the marriage market and game-theoretic approaches to bargaining to propose a unifying framework for the economics of marriage in North Africa. New empirical evidence is presented on the economics of marriage in Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia, illustrating how individuals' characteristics and ability to pay shape bargaining power and marriage outcomes, including age at marriage, marriage, costs, consanguinity, and nuclear residence.

Female Labor Force Participation, Fertility and the Timing of Marriage in Morocco

Topics in Middle Eastern andNorth African Economies, 2003

Studying the impact of fertility on the extent of female labor force participation and the form that this participation takes is complicated by the fact that both fertility and participation are potentially endogenous household decisions, requiring simultaneous estimation. Such estimation is further complicated by the need to find appropriate instruments for fertility. Moreover, the timing of marriage (or the probability of being married at a certain age), which is an important determinant of both fertility and participation, may also be endogenous to those decisions. In this paper, we estimate a structural model for labor force participation that distinguishes between different participation states (non-wage work, public wage work, private wage work, and unemployment) and that takes into account the endogeneity of the timing of marriage and fertility. We find that, in urban Morocco, marriage per se is not a constraint on labor force participation, but that it is a constraint on eng...