The Impact of Early Marriage on Women’s Employment in the Middle East and North Africa (original) (raw)
Related papers
EMPLOYMENT’S ROLE IN ENABLING AND CONSTRAINING MARRIAGE IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA
This paper makes use of a series of comparable surveys to investigate the role of employment in enabling and constraining marriage for young men and women in Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia. It draws on several key strains of theoretical literature, including the global and regional life course transitions literature and the literature on the economics of marriage, both globally and in the Middle East and North Africa. Three key empirical questions about the role of employment in enabling or constraining marriage are examined: (i) How do different labor market statuses affect the timing and probability of marriage? (ii) How much of the effect of employment statuses on marriage are mediated through different qualities of the job, such as the security and prestige of jobs or earnings and ability to save? and (iii) Does searching for a longer time for a formal job pay off as a strategy for accelerating marriage? Our findings confirm previous research which shows that for men both employment and the quality of that employment matter for the timing of marriage. The effect of public sector employment on raising the hazard of marriage increases after accounting for endogeneity in Egypt and Tunisia. For women, the results suggest that employment is endogenous to the timing of the marriage decision and once endogeneity is taken into account, we find that public sector employment substantially increases the hazard of marriage in all three countries. We also found that, from a perspective of speeding up marriage, it may be worthwhile for young people to remain in the unemployment state longer if that leads to obtaining a higher quality job.
Topics in Middle Eastern and North African …, 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 engaging in paid employment in the private sector. The presence of school-age children significantly reduces participation in all types of wage work. Moreover, a woman's own education, as well as that of her father, significantly increase the probability of her participation in the public sector. With the dramatic slowdown in public sector hiring in recent years, these variables are also strong determinants of female unemployment.
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
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.
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.
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
Ever married women’s participation in labor market in Egypt: constraints and opportunities
Middle East Development Journal, 2018
This research studies the individual, households and community determinants affecting Egyptian woman's decision to enter the labor force and affecting her employment status. Using the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey ELMPS, 2012, five probit models were estimated for ever-married women. The first model is about Egyptian women's decision to participate in the labor force. Once she is in the labor force, the second model studies the determinants of being employed. Among employed women, three employment types are tackled in the remaining three models; being employed in the public sector (model 3), being a private wage worker (model 4) and being self-employed (model 5). As found in the literature, the results show that there is a strong dependence between woman's education and employment type. Moreover, the results confirm the role played by the mother's employment status in her daughter's labor force participation. Finally, the community characteristics play a significant role in affecting women's decision in entering the labor force. Once society accepts the integration of women in the labor market and not only being responsible for care and house work, individual characteristics and households characteristics influenced her decision of which employment type to choose.
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...
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...
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.