Education-Occupation Mismatch and the Effect on Wages of Egyptian Workers

This study attempts to fill a void in the literature by examining education-occupation mismatches in Egypt. Using the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey (ELMPS) 2006 and Egypt Labor Market Survey (ELMS) 1998, this paper investigates whether the empirical evidences of studies on over-education and under-education carry over to the private sector of the Egyptian labor market; evaluates the incidence and magnitude of the education-occupation mismatch by gender and by occupational categories; and determines whether the incidence of educational mismatches has increased over time. The main findings are as follows: there is evidence of an education-occupation mismatch in the Egyptian private sector. The incidence has declined from 51% to 42% during the eight year period, and males are more likely to be mismatched than females. The Egyptian labor market has witnessed a drop in the percentage of overeducated workers at the expense of an expansion in the share of under-educated workers. Empirical findings do not support the main stream literature. Returns to over-education for white collar and blue collar males are higher than those of adequately educated males and are greater in 2006 than in 1998. Females in white collar jobs, both over and undereducated, received higher returns than adequately educated females in 1998, but returns to over-education were higher and returns to under-education were lower than adequate education in 2006. Females in blue collar jobs are being penalized if they are inadequately matched, especially in 2006, and are rewarded less than males. These findings support the job competition model in a labor market with an imperfect information system whereby employers use education as an indicator of the cost of investing in job training. Workers, on the other hand, may accept these jobs while competing for a job

Does Wealth Influence Women’s Labor Participation Decision?: Evidence from Egypt

This study examines the behavior of labor supply of women at different levels of household wealth status. It is widely demonstrated in the literature that variables such as age and level of education, as well as the demographic, social, and financial characteristics of the household influence deciding to join the labor market. However, this study argues that these determinants work differently according to the level or the well-being of the household, adding another to the literature on women’s labor supply in MENA

HAVE ECONOMIC REFORMS PAID-OFF? GENDER OCCUPATIONAL INEQUALITY IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM IN EGYPT

This study considers the impact of over a decade of structural adjustment policies in Egypt on gender wage and occupational inequality. Using newly released Labor Force Sample Surveys (LFSS) for the years 2000-2004, a slight drop in public sector employment and a comparable increase in private sector employment for women is observed. Regardless of sector of employment, women still earn less than men, with private sector workers being the worst. Wage discrimination in the private sector in favor of men is evident at three groups of occupations: white collars, blue collars and professionals. Results also indicate occupational segregation and crowding of women in specific job types is a more serious issue in pay differences for blue collars in recent years, while pure discrimination is dictating wage differentials for professionals and white collars. Elements of productivity in terms of human capital endowments are not directly responsible for wage inequality in the private sector. Despite having less education, men receive higher wages for their comparative advantage in years of experience. Contrary to years of education, experience, as a factor endowment and a proxy for productivity, is highly valued and compensated for in favor of men

On local compactness in quasilinear elliptic problems

One of the major difficulties in nonlinear elliptic problems involving critical nonlinearities is the compactness of Palais-Smale sequences. In their celebrated work \cite{BN}, Br\'ezis and Nirenberg introduced the notion of critical level for these sequences in the case of a critical perturbation of the Laplacian homogeneous eigenvalue problem. In this paper, we give a natural and general formula of the critical level for a large class of nonlinear elliptic critical problems. The sharpness of our formula is established by the construction of suitable Palais-Smale sequences which are not relatively compact

Wage Inequality, Returns to Education and Gender Premia in MENA

Since the early 1990s, most countries in the MENA region started a new development model that aims to rely mostly on a growing export oriented, and privately held economy to achieve higher rates of growth. This chapter explores some of the equity implications of this transition by examining changes in the distribution of returns to education and gender wage premia in the Egyptian and Moroccan labor market in the 1990s. This is accomplished by estimating joint models of educational choice and wage determination for both countries yielding selectivity corrected returns to different levels of education, from which a crude estimate of the private rate of return is calculated

Why does the MENA region have such high unemployment rates?

This paper will examine the pattern of unemployment and the main characteristics of those unemployed in MENA. Then it will discuss the factors behind high unemployment rates in the region, before focusing on Egypt and Morocco to provide in depth understanding of the determinants of unemployment in two countries of the regio

The Effects of Structural Adjustment on Youth Unemployment in Egypt

The persistence of high unemployment rates in recent years has become a major problem in many MENA countries, especially in Egypt. The aim of this paper is to examine the effects of economic reforms in Egypt on youth unemployment. The paper investigates the extent to which reforms in the early 1990s have led to higher unemployment among the youth in Egypt. The paper presents new evidence on the incidence of youth unemployment before and after the structural adjustment period, in 1988 and 1998. In addition, it examines the determinants of unemployment duration and the probability of exiting unemployment by estimating hazard functions for exits to public sector and private sector employment. The main findings of the paper show that the incidence of youth unemployment has increased during the 1990s. In addition, the empirical evidence suggests that youth unemployment is the result of not only queuing for public sector jobs, but also and more importantly the limited role played by the private sector in job creation and labor absorption

Wage Inequality by Education and Gender in MENA: Contrasting the Egyptian and Moroccan Experiences in the 1990s

The 1990s has been a decade of considerable socioeconomic change in the MENA region characterized by adoption of economic liberalization policies and a declining role of the state as an employer in the labor market. This paper explores some of the equity implications of this transition by examining changes in the distribution of returns to education and gender wage premia in the Egypt and Morocco market using joint models of educational choice and wage determination. Selectivity corrected returns to different levels of education indicate that a reduction in the role of the public sector lead to lower returns in the private sector and falling returns over time. Only at the university level, are returns higher in the private sector in Egypt indicating that employers place relatively little value on basic and secondary education. In Morocco there is some evidence of higher returns in the private sector by the end of the 1990, which might be indicative of better matching of educational credentials and productivity differences. Oaxaca-Blinder wages-differentials decompositions of sector and gender wage gap for Egypt and Morocco indicate that the unexplained component in public wage premia and gender gaps have declined in Egypt, but substantially increased in Morocco over the 1990s. Overall, economic liberalization and public sector retrenchment which were much more comprehensive in Morocco appear to have had a more dislocating effect also on labor market wage outcomes. The paper ends with some policy implications and suggests future directions of research in the areas of educational and public sector reform and policies to improve access of women to the private sectors in MENA

The Impact of Minimum Wages on Wage Inequality and Employment in the Formal and Informal Sector in Costa Rica

This paper tests the impact of the Costa Rican minimum wage policy on wage inequality and the level of employment in the formal sector (covered by minimum wage legislation) and the informal (uncovered) sector. We also examine the redistributive effects of the minimum wage, between the covered sector and the uncovered sector. Regression analysis using micro data from the Labour Force Surveys over 17 years reveals three important findings. At the median, a unit increase in the minimum wage relative to the average wage is associated with:http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39864/3/wp479.pd