The dynamics of family formation and women’s work : what facilitates and hinders female employment in the middle east and north Africa ?

Abstract EN

This paper investigates the dynamic relationship between family formation and women’s employment, a previously unexplored aspect of female labor force participation in MENA region.

The paper studies Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia, leveraging unique retrospective data on work, marriage, child bearing and child rearing.

The time variation allows us to estimate discrete hazard models for the duration of different labor statuses.

This paper examines three sets of outcomes: (1) duration in employment, (2) duration in non-employment, and (3) duration in different labor market states and specific types of work.

Findings show that anticipating marriage and child-bearing are strongly associated with women’s employment outcomes.

Non-employment is an absorbing state, particularly after marriage