Egyptian Men Working Abroad: Labor Supply Responses by the Women Left Behind

Female labor force participation has remained low in Egypt. This paper examines whether male international migration provides a leeway for women to enter the labor market and/or to increase their labor supply. In line with previous studies, we find a decrease in wage work in both rural and urban areas. However, women living in rural areas and affected by migration are much more likely to be employed in non-wage activities (i.e. unpaid family work) and subsistence work compared to women in non-migrant households. Furthermore, we find evidence that this labor supply response is driven by the household’s need to replace the migrant's labor rather than by a loosening of a financing constraint on family enterprises made possible by the flow of remittances.labor supply, remittances, migration, gender

The Impact of International Migration and Remittances on the Labor-Supply Behavior of Those Left behind: Evidence from Egypt

We analyze in this paper the impact of male-dominated migration and remittance income on the participation and hours worked decisions of adults left behind, including the hours spent by women in subsistence and domestic work. We differentiate between a 'pure' migration ("M") effect and the joint effect of migration and remittance income ("MR") and evaluate these effects for men and women separately. Additionally, we examine the labor supply behavior of wives whose husband migrated. We draw on the 2006 cross section using an instrumental variable approach as well as on the 1998/2006 panel of the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey (ELMPS06). In line with the literature, women in MR households (albeit not in M households) tend to reduce their wage and salary work. We find evidence for both intra-household specialization and an increase in women's (and wives') total work load. Men are generally less affected. Our results suggest that it is important to differentiate between these two effects and between the different forms of market and non-market work as well as to consider the relationship between remitter and recipient.migration, remittances, labor supply, time allocation, gender

Excluded Generation: The Growing Challenges of Labor Market Insertion for Egyptian Youth

Youth in Egypt hold rising aspirations for their adult lives, yet face an increasingly uncertain and protracted transition from school to work and thus into adulthood. This paper investigates how labor market insertion has been evolving over time in Egypt and how the nature of youth transitions relates to gender and social class. We demonstrate that youth today face poorer chances of transitioning into a good job than previous generations, despite large increases in educational attainment. Social class is playing an increasing role in determining the success of the transition from school to work in Egypt. Whether youth successfully make transitions to formal jobs, embark on such transitions and fail, or pursue a traditional route to adulthood depends on a complex and changing interaction between their own educational attainment and the resources of their families. In light of these findings, we discuss the policies that can help facilitate successful transitions for struggling youth in Egypt

THE DETERMINANTS OF EMPLOYMENT STATUS IN EGYPT

Egyptian labor market is moving from a period of high overall unemployment to one where unemployment is increasingly concentrated among specific groups whose access to the private-sector labor market is limited. Educated young women are more adversely affected than their male counterparts by the transition to a private-sector-led economy. There is no systematic link between youth unemployment among new entrants and poverty unless it is the head of the household who is unemployed. An economic policy environment that is favorable for labor-intensive, export-oriented industries would help absorb the new entrants into the labor market, and the prospect is particularly good for young female workers. Policymakers should consider a reduction in the femalespecific employer mandates (such as the existing provision for a generous maternity leave) that raise the cost of hiring women

Does Improved Local Supply of Schooling Enhance Intergenerational Mobility in Education? Evidence from Jordan

This paper examines the effect of increased local supply of schooling on intergenerational mobility in education in Jordan. We use a unique data set that links individual data on own schooling and parents’ schooling for adults, from a household survey, with the annual supply of schools in the sub-district of birth, from a school census. We identify the effect by exploiting the variation in the supply of basic and secondary public schools across cohorts and sub-districts of birth in Jordan, controlling for both cohort and sub-district of birth fixed effects. School availability is determined based on the number of sex-appropriate public schools in the individual’s sub-district of birth at the time the individual was ready to start that schooling stage. Our findings show that the local availability of basic public schools does in fact increase intergenerational mobility in education. For instance, an increase in the supply of basic public schools of one school per 1,000 people reduces the father-son and mother-son associations of schooling by 10 percent and the father-daughter and mother-daughter associations by nearly 30 percent. However, an increase in the local supply of secondary public schools does not seem to have a similar effect on intergenerational mobility in education

Egyptian men working abroad: Labor supply responses by the women left behind

Female labor force participation has remained low in Egypt. This paper examines whether male international migration provides a leeway for women to enter the labor market and/or to increase their labor supply. In line with previous studies, we find a decrease in wage work in both rural and urban areas. However, women living in rural areas and affected by migration are much more likely to be employed in non-wage activities (i.e. unpaid family work) and subsistence work compared to women in non-migrant households. Furthermore, we find evidence that this labor supply response is driven by the household's need to replace the migrant's labor rather than by a loosening of a financing constraint on family enterprises made possible by the flow of remittances

Measuring and operationalizing job quality in Egypt

Given data constraints and the complexity of the concept, it is already quite challenging to operationalize the notion of job quality for wage and salary employment, but even more so for nonwage workers. This working paper addresses this challenge and attempts to formulate a measure of job quality at the individual job level. We combine information on actual and estimated earnings with information on access to social insurance, regularity of employment, work hours, and the nature of the workplace into an index of job quality, and we investigate the individual and enterprise-level determinants of such an index. Although our findings show that on the whole job quality appears to have declined in Egypt over the 1998 to 2006 period, it has in fact increased among wage and salary workers in the private sector, and most noticeably among workers in microenterprises. The overall decline can be partially attributed to measurement issues related to nonwage workers and to a compositional shift of the workforce away from what is generally considered high-quality public-sector employment