Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on subjective wellbeing in the Middle East and North Africa: A gender analysis.

The pathways through which the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted population mental health are potentially gendered. Little research has explored these pathways in low- and middle-income country contexts, such as in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, where socioeconomic roles are highly gendered. To address this gap, we examine the relationships between pandemic-related socioeconomic changes and subjective wellbeing in the MENA region. Our core hypothesis is that the COVID-19 pandemic affected men and women's subjective wellbeing differently in part because these effects were mediated by gendered socioeconomic roles. We exploit multiple waves of longitudinal, nationally-representative phone survey data across Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia. The data were collected between November 2020 and August 2021 and include 32,296 observations of 20,256 unique individuals. Mental health is measured through the WHO-5 subjective wellbeing scale. Our key independent variables capture pandemic-related employment loss, income loss, experience of limitations on food access, enrollment of children in alternative schooling modalities, and receipt of formal and informal transfers. We find significantly worse subjective wellbeing for women in Egypt and Morocco during the pandemic, but not the three other countries. There were negative associations between employment and income loss during the pandemic and subjective wellbeing, but not gender-differentiated ones. In contrast, high levels of limitations on food access were associated with worse mental health for men than women. Receipt of transfers generally did not have any association with subjective wellbeing. Further research is needed into how social assistance programs implemented in response to pandemics may be designed so as to address the negative mental health consequences of such events.

Evaluating the impact of housing market liberalization on the timing of marriage: Evidence from Egypt.

The transition to adulthood around the world is increasingly characterized by young people's desire to form independent households. Forming such households in Egypt requires buying or building a dwelling or obtaining a rental unit. Policies governing housing markets, such as rent control, and limited financing options have historically made access to housing for young couples challenging. In this paper, we use a difference-in-difference approach to evaluate how the liberalization of rental markets in Egypt affected the timing of marriage. We find that Egypt's 1996 rental reforms accelerated marriages and led to a reversal in the trend of rising age at marriage.

Employment's Role in Enabling and Constraining Marriage in the Middle East and North Africa.

We investigate the role of employment in enabling and constraining marriage for young men and women in Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia. Survival analysis methods for age at marriage are applied to comparable labor market panel surveys from Egypt (2012), Jordan (2010), and Tunisia (2014), which include detailed labor market histories. For men, employment and especially high-quality employment are associated with more rapid transitions to marriage. For women, past-but not contemporaneous-employment statuses are associated with more rapid transitions to marriage. After addressing endogeneity using residual-inclusion methods for the case of public sector employment (a type of high-quality employment), we find that such employment significantly accelerates marriage for men in Egypt and women in Egypt and Tunisia. The potential of high-quality employment to accelerate marriage may make queuing in unemployment while seeking high-quality employment a worthwhile strategy.

Persistence and Change in Marriage Practices among Syrian Refugees in Jordan.

Early marriage, which is associated with a wide range of negative health and socioeconomic outcomes, may be a response to conflict and displacement. Since the onset of the Syrian conflict in 2011, there has been considerable attention to reports of high and potentially increasing rates of early marriage among Syrian refugee women. Using nationally representative survey data from Jordan in 2016 and Syria in 2009, as well as qualitative interviews with Syrian refugee youth in Jordan, we examine changes in age at marriage and drivers of early marriage. We find no evidence of an increase in early marriage rates after refugees' arrival to Jordan. Rates of early marriage among the Syrians now in Jordan were higher than preconflict national rates and have remained similar postdisplacement, although poverty and security concerns have created new drivers for accelerating marriage for young women. Other dynamics of the Syrian marriage market in displacement may act to decelerate marriage rates, including declining rates of consanguinity and inability to meet marriage costs. Analysis of early marriage in displacement must be placed within the context of change in marriage practices among refugees more broadly.

Inequality of Opportunity in Wages and Consumption in Egypt.

Most explanations of the recent political upheavals in Egypt since 2011 include a reference to rising inequality, but the usual indicators of income inequality in Egypt do not support that inequality was on the rise prior to the uprisings. In this paper we provide measures of inequality of opportunity in wages and consumption for Egypt at different points in time from 1988 to 2012 that shed light on the gap between popular perceptions and measured indices of inequality. Our findings indicate that although measures of inequality of wage income have increased over time in Egypt starting in 1998, the share attributable to circumstances declined steadily throughout the whole period. We attribute this decline to the fact that outcomes for individuals from a middle class background have moved closer to the outcomes of those from a poor background. The outcomes for those from privileged backgrounds remain quite apart from the rest.

Does the Type of Higher Education Affect Labor Market Outcomes? Evidence from Egypt and Jordan.

In Egypt and Jordan there is a substantial mismatch between the output of the higher education system and the needs of the labor market. Both demand and supply-side factors could be driving this mismatch. This paper tests a key supply-side issue, whether differences in the institutional structures and incentives in higher education affect the labor market outcomes of graduates. Specifically, we ask if the stronger alignment of incentives in private relative to public higher education institutions produces more employable human capital and better labor market outcomes. We examine the impact of the type of higher education institution a person attends on several labor market outcomes while controlling for his or her pre-enrollment characteristics. The results demonstrate that supply-side issues and institutional incentives have little impact on labor market outcomes while family background plays by far the largest role. Proposed reforms for higher education often suggest increasing the role of the private sector in provision of higher education. Our findings indicate that this approach is unlikely to improve labor market outcomes.