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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Extremal functions for the anisotropic Sobolev inequalities

The existence of multiple nonnegative solutions to the anisotropic critical problem - \sum_{i=1}^{N} \frac{\partial}{\partial x_i} (| \frac{\partial u}{\partial x_i} |^{p_i-2} \frac{\partial u}{\partial x_i}) = |u|^{p^*-2} u {in} \mathbb{R}^N is proved in suitable anisotropic Sobolev spaces. The solutions correspond to extremal functions of a certain best Sobolev constant. The main tool in our study is an adaptation of the well-known concentration-compactness lemma of P.-L. Lions to anisotropic operators. Futhermore, we show that the set of nontrival solutions \calS is included in $L^\infty(\R^N)$ and is located outside of a ball of radius $\tau >0$ in $L^{p^*}(\R^N)$