The gendered effects of labour market experiences on marriage timing in Egypt (original) (raw)
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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.
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.
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
Does International Migration Help Them Marry earlier? A Hazard Model for the Case of Egypt
2016
Marriage represents an important step of entering adulthood in the Egyptian society and its delay often results in tensions and frustration among youth. Considering migration as a predetermined strategy to reach a targeted level of savings, we question whether having migrated helps shorten the duration to marriage in the case of Egypt. To the best of our knowledge, the present study will be the first to link the timing of migration to the timing of marriage in the case of Egypt. We find no effect of migration on the timing of marriage, except within the migrant population.
Marriage Postponement in Iran: Accounting for Socio-economic and Cultural Change in Time and Space
Population, Space and Place, 2013
The mean age at marriage of Iranian women increased by three years between the mid-1980s and 2000 during a period of great socioeconomic change, particularly affecting the 1971-1975 and 1976-1980 birth cohorts. This paper analyses the marriage timing and life course experience of these cohorts of women and highlights the contribution that ethnicity and changes in the socioeconomic context made to the sharp marriage delay experienced by the 1976-1980 birth cohort. A discrete time hazard model is applied to the 2000 Iran Demographic and Health Survey data, which are linked to a range of time-varying district-level contextual variables created from the 1986 and 1996 Iranian censuses. The findings suggest that the marriage postponement experienced by the younger birth cohort is related to improvements in women's education and can partly be explained by the increased opportunity costs of marriage, which resulted from limited access to education after marriage. The findings also suggest that differences in marriage timing between areas predominated by certain ethnic groups became less evident for the younger birth cohort.
Early Marriage Determinants and Implications among Egyptian Women in Gharbia Governorate
2021
Background: Early marriage with its harmful effects on women’s health is one of the most important public health issues. Objective: This study was designed to explore the perception and determinants of early marriage and its harmful consequences on females in urban and rural areas of Gharbia Governorate, Egypt. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted for 3 months and included 1,293 women from family health facilities in Gharbia Governorate, Egypt. A predesigned interview questionnaire was used to collect related data. Results: Of the participants, 36.7% married before the age of 20 years: this phenomenon was significantly more prevalent in rural than in urban areas (45.5% vs. 27.8%, respectively). Significant factors associated with early marriage included low educational level of the females and their parents (p > 0.001(. Conclusion: Early marriage is still practiced in Egypt with misconceptions about the proper age of marriage. This harmful practice might lead to adverse...
Demographic Research, 2021
BACKGROUND Previous research has shown that individuals from high-status families enter marriage later than those from low-status families. However, in many Western societies, it has become common to cohabit prior to marriage. Does this change the link between parental socioeconomic status (SES) and marriage timing? OBJECTIVE This study examines to what extent the impact of parental SES on the timing of first marriage weakens after young adults start a cohabiting union. It also examines crossnational variation in the link between parental SES and marriage timing before and after young adults cohabit and whether this variation depends on countries' position in the cohabitation transition. METHODS We apply discrete-time hazard models and meta-analytical tools using data from 20 Western countries. To examine whether the cohabitation stage of countries explains country differences, we construct a four-stage cohabitation typology. RESULTS In most countries, higher parental SES results in later entry into marriage. The impact of parental SES on marriage timing weakens considerably after young adults entered a cohabiting union. Substantial cross-national variation is found in the strength of the link between parental SES and marriage timing. However, this variation cannot be explained by the cohabitation stage countries are in.
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.