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Marriage and Women’s Employment in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
- 1. Marriage and Women’s Employment in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) By Ragui Assaad, University of Minnesota Caroline Krafft, St. Catherine University Irene Selwaness, Cairo University ERF 23rd Annual Conference March 18–20 2017 Amman, Jordan Special Event: The Economics of Life Course Transitions in the Middle East and North Africa
- 2. Marriage and Women’s Employment in the Life Course • Norms about gender division of labor within the household in MENA – Male Breadwinner/ Female Homemaker – Transition to adulthood “Marriage” domestic responsibilities market work – Closing of gender gap in education. • (Assaad, Hendy, Lassasi, & Yassine, 2016) – Type of work matters: • Assaad & El-Hamidi (2001); Assaad, Ghazouani, & Krafft (2017a); Assaad & Zouari (2003); Hendy (2015).
- 3. Aim of this paper • How does marriage timing affect women’s work? – Effect of Marrying by the median age on different employment outcomes – For three countries in the MENA: Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia • Account for potential endogeneity of the timing of marriage – Instrumental Variable (IV) approach – Reverse Causality/simultaneity
- 4. Data Sources • Three comparable surveys carried out by Economic Research Forum and the relevant National Statistical Office: – Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey of 2012 (ELMPS 2012) – Jordan Labor Market Panel Survey of 2010 (JLMPS 2010) – Tunisia Labor Market Panel Survey of 2014 (TLMPS 2014) • Additional data from Population Censuses to construct our instruments – Egypt 1996 (IPUMS), Jordan 2004 (IPUMS), Tunisia 2004 (INS)
- 5. Some Background Info 18 77 23 80 51 24 13 65 17 71 44 34 19 64 25 73 26 23 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 Females Males Females Males Females Males Employment to Population Ratio LFP Rate Percent of Employed in Public Sector Percent Egypt 2012 Jordan 2010 Tunisia 2014
- 6. Some Background Info 24 4 50 10 20 9 43 2021 11 38 34 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 Females Males Females Males Unemployment Rate Youth (15-24) Unemployment Rate Percent Egypt 2012 Jordan 2010 Tunisia 2014
- 7. Percentage Employed by Marital Status, Sex and Country, Non-students, Ages 15-64 87 25 74 28 63 32 98 18 84 12 81 18 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Male Female Male Female Male Female Egypt Jordan Tunisia PercentageEmployed Unmarried Married 57% 46%27%
- 8. Employment States Before and After Marriage
- 9. Methods (1) • Dependent variables (binary): • Employed or not (market definition of employment) • Employed for wages or not • Employed for wages in private sector or not • Employed for wages in public sector or not • Engaged in non-wage work or not – (only for Egypt and Tunisia only) • Treatment: Marriage by the median age (22 in Egypt and Jordan, 27 in Tunisia). • Possible endogeneity of treatment IV approach (Bivariate Probit and IV probit).
- 10. Methods (2) • Instruments 1. Sex ratio in location of birth (F/M+5 year birth cohort) • Data obtained from Population Censuses (Egypt 1996 , Jordan 2004 and Tunisia 2004) 2. Ratio of female to total siblings in natal household 3. Whether woman is eldest among her female siblings • Not available for Jordan • Other controls – Age, age squared – Educational attainment – Parental characteristics: Education and work – Region of birth by urban/rural character – For Egypt, ratio of males migrants to male population in village/neighborhood of birth • Standard Errors: bootstrapped and clustered
- 11. The relative change in the probability of different employment outcomes for women due to marrying by the median age, by country (percentages) -16 -47 -33-32 -50 -50-40 -76 -57 -30 -28 -42 54 57 -100 -80 -60 -40 -20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Egypt Jordan Tunisia PercentageChange Work Wage Work Private Wage Work Public Wage Work Non Wage Work Key Findings: Relative Effects Note: Results based on IV Probit estimates. Bars indicate 95% confidence intervals
- 12. Findings • Findings are robust to changing age at first marriage • Ages 24, 26 for Egypt & Jordan and 22, 24 for Tunisia • During state-led era, public sector work reconciling domestic and work responsibilities • Employment became increasingly private and increasingly informal much less hospitable to women • In Tunisia, women return to private wage employment after several years of marriage • Domestic work burden is a hard constraint: • Country with heaviest domestic work burden for married women (Jordan) is also country with largest negative effect of marriage on employment. Let’s see
- 13. 13 16 31 31 17 17 38 37 11 9 23 20 41 37 42 37 46 40 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 Not Employed Employed Not Employed Employed Not Employed Employed Not Employed Employed Not Employed Employed Not Employed Employed Unmarri edMarried Unmarri edMarried Unmarri edMarried EgyptJordanTunisia Hours per week Domestic hours Market hours No relief for the double burden: The domestic work burden depends on women’s marital status rather than women’s employment status
- 14. Policy Implications • Alleviate double burden: • Publicly provided child care and early childhood education • Better, faster and safer public transportation • Encourage Employers to hire women: • Subsidize the cost of paid maternity leave (e.g. by social insurance system rather than individual employers) • Incentive to employers to provide part-time work, job-sharing, telecommuting. • Avoid fixed costs of employment, such as daily rather than hourly minimum wages • Remove market obstacles for time-saving services and devices
- 15. Paid Maternity Leave Among Women Working During their First Pregnancy 18 18 65 8 6 87 19 44 37 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 None 2-6 weeks 7+ weeks PercentageofWomen Egypt Jordan Tunisia
- 16. Primary Child Care Provider 27 18 19 13 14 8 1 11 18 30 8 23 9 2 18 15 27 19 5 16 2 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 PercentageofWomen Egypt Jordan Tunisia
- 17. Percentage of Women in Workplace for Working Women 15-64 8 21 33 36 31 15 37 48 0 11 10 16 47 17 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 none < 1/4 1/4 - 1/2 >1/2 do not know Percentage Egypt Jordan Tunisia
- 18. Mean Commute Time by Sex 30 41 19 33 67 21 25 25 21 21 30 16 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 Egypt Jordan Tunisia Egypt Jordan Tunisia Urban Rural TravelTimeinMinutes Male Female
- 19. Timing of Marriage Proportion of women marrying by each age, Ages 22-39 Median Marriage age: Egypt: 22 Jordan: 22 Tunisia: 27 Egypt Jordan Tunisia
- 20. The relative change in the probability of different employment outcomes for women due to marrying by various ages by country (percentages) -16 -23 -18 -47 -46 -46 -32 -29 -33-32 -34 -30 -50 -48 -47 -70 -52 -50 -40 -52 -46 -76 -68 -60 -81 -58 -57 -30 -27 -24 -28 -20 -28 -65 -41 -42 54 59 66 38 33 57 -140 -120 -100 -80 -60 -40 -20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Age 22 Age 24 Age 26 Age 22 Age 24 Age 26 Age 22 Age 24 Age 27 Egypt Jordan Tunisia PERCENTAGECHANGE Work Wage Work Private Wage Work Public Wage Work Non Wage Work Sensitivity to changing the threshold age of marriage
Editor's Notes
- MENA region is known for strong norms about gender division of labor within the household where usually the role of the male is that of the breadwinner while that of the female is the homemaker and assuming full responsibility of the domestic sphere. Specifically for women, marriage, considered as a main step in the transition to adulthood and is associated with substantial increase in domestic responsibilities that can interfere with ability to engage in market work. It is work that gives way when work is irreconcilable with marriage responsibilities. Closing of gender gap in education has not been accompanied by a proportionate increase in female participation, mainly due to the hardship of reconciing market work and domestic work. Past research has demonstrated an important relationship between the type of work and women’s ability to work after marriage.
- Because almost all women eventually marry, we were not interested in the effect of marriage as such on employment, but rather we are interested in the effect of marriage by the median age or “relatively early” marriage on the ability of women to engage in work. & because the type of work matters, we study this effect of marriage timing on women’s engagement in various types of employment. We are interested in the effect of marriage by the median age (a given age), on women’s engagement in various types of employment Our primary contribution is our attempt to address the potential endogeneity of the timing of marriage in relation to employment. While most women in the three countries we consider, Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia, eventually marry, the time at which they marry could well be either advanced or delayed by the fact that they are employed and by the type of employment they are engaged in. Gender role attitudes or other unobserved factors may also drive both work and marriage decisions. We addressed this potential endogeneity by attempting to identify instruments for the timing of marriage that would satisfy the necessary exogeneity and exclusion restrictions.
- Here are some background information about women’s situation in the three countries of study. It is by now well established that female employment rates and labor force participation rates in the MENA region are quite low by global standards. In Egypt and Tunisia, female employment rates reach around 18% or 19% and a bit lower in Jordan 13% compared to 77% employment rate in Egypt an 65% in Tunisia and Jordan. LFP for females are higher than employment rates b/c of high unemployment, which we will see in the next slide. 23%-25% in Egypt and Tunisia and again lower in Jordan 17% against 80% for men in Egypt and 70% in Jordan and Tunisia. Among those who do work, half (52 percent) in Egypt work in the public sector , compared to only 24 percent of men, 44% in Jordan compared to 34% iof men and in Tunisia, we have almost similar proportions of public sector workers for men and women. Cearly, in Egypt and Jordan,, public sector employment is a prefered one.
- In contrast, women have higher unemployment rates than men, in the 3 countries, more pronounced among highly educated women. Among youth females, the situation is harder with much higher unemployment rates than for the 15-64 ages.
- As for associations of marriage and employment, This figure compares the employment rates of men and women by marital status across countries for non-students. Clearly in all three countries, married men are more likely to work than unmarried men. The opposite is true for women: married women are much less likely to work than unmarried ones, with the gap in employment rates between unmarried and married women being particularly large in Jordan While men are more likely to work when they are married, the opposite is true for women in all three countries. Employment rates for married women are 27 percent lower than for unmarried women in Egypt (18 percent vs. 25 percent), 46 percent lower in Tunisia (18 percent vs. 34 percent) and 57 percent lower in Jordan (12 percent vs. 28 percent).
- As for this graph, it traces the evolution of the proportion of women in different sectors of work relative to the year of marriage, spanning a period of ten years prior to ten years after marriage In the three countries, we see than the share of women in the private sector drops substantially at marriage. An interesting observation is that their share never recoevres in Egypt anda Jordan to the levels seen prior to marriage. However, Tunisia is an exception where apparently, women are able to return to the private sector few years after marriage. there is no comparable decline in public sector or non-wage work at marriage; both continue to rise (except non wage in Jordan). Given these important relationships between type of work and persistence after marriage, we frame our multivariate model outcomes in terms of these types of work.
- Our main outcome of interest is the Probability of each of the following employment outcomes. Employment or not using the market definition of employment, wage employment versus otherwise. Private sector wage employment, public sector wage employment, and non-wage work. This last outcome is only estimate for Egypt and Tunisia because very few women work in non-wage in Jordan. (small sample). Our main explanatory variable is marriage by the median age. 22 in Egypt and Jordan and 27 in Tunisia. Three kind of models. A simple probit model, and to accunt to the endogeneity of marriage timing, we estimate a biavriate probit model and an IV probit model to instrument it.
- We used three instruments that we extracted from the population censes as I mentioned before. The first one is the sex ratio in the locality of birth, defined as the ratio of females in the woman’s five-year birth cohort to males born in the preceding five-year birth cohort in the women’s location of birth. This five year gap is approximately the average age gap between spouses in the 3 countries. We calculate these sex ratio at the most detailed geographic level for which we can obtain data for, using pop censuses for each country. For Egypt, district Jordan, subdistrict, Tunisia gov with urban/rural. A higher sex ratio of females to males may delay marriage due to the shortage of potential marriage partners. 2. The second one is the ratio of female is total siblings in the natal household. We hypothesize that a higher ratio of female siblings to all siblings will delay marriage as younger siblings wait for the older siblings to marry. 3. The third is the birth order, which is whether the woman is the eldest among her female siblings. Being the ledest daught may speed up marriage Other controls… As for male migrants at the village level of birth in case migration is driving the local sex ratios, which we use as one of our instruments. Such a variable is not available in Jordan and Tunisia
- As to the key findings, this graph shows the percentage changes in the probability of different employment outcomes due to marrying by the median age. These results are based on the IV probit estimates. Largest effect if first marrying by median age on employment is in Jordan, followed by Tunisia and then Egypt Effect of marriage by median age in Egypt and Tunisia is attenuated by the fact that many women are able to engage in non-wage work, which increases after marriage. Although Similar effects in Egypt and Tunisia for private wage work: Overall wage work is less affected in Egypt due to the higher prevalence of public sector wage work The difference in effect between public and private wage work is largest in the case of Jordan and smallest in Tunisia. Women in Tunisia appear to be able to return to private wage work several years after marriage
- Public sector employment, with its shorter hours, more generous maternity benefits and childcare provisions, was widely seen as reconcilable with women’s domestic responsibilities within marriage. As MENA economies underwent restructuring in the 1980s and 1990s in response to fiscal crises and the inability to sustain the state-led model, employment opportunities in the public sector began to dry up for both men and women. Employment became increasingly informal, female new entrants found such work to be highly inhospitable and increasingly shied away from it, preferring instead to either remain unemployed or withdraw from the labor force altogether. We note from the descriptive statistics on the relationship between the timing of marriage and employment that women in Jordan continue leaving private wage employment several years into their marriage, while, in Egypt, the departures occur at marriage and then the proportion in private wage employment stabilizes thereafter. In Tunisia, on the other hand, women return to private wage employment after several years of marriage, with the proportion in such employment ten years after marriage reverting to where it was just prior to marriage.
- This is my preferred graph of the presentation. This graph shows the hours of domestic and market work for women 15 to 64 by their employment and marital status. The domestic workloads number of hours of engagement in domestic responsibilities are much higher after marriage than before marriage, but they also vary little by whether the woman is employed or not. Jordan has the highest number of domestic hours Married Tunisian women appear to have substantially lower domestic work burdens than their counterparts in either Jordan or Egypt
- This figure shows the proportion of women married at each age by country. Marriage is nearly universal in Egypt, but in Jordan only around 84 percent of the sample is married by age 39 and in Tunisia the share is around 78 percent, indicating variation in the universality of marriage