A new GLO Discussion Paper carefully analyzes the components of the low female work participation in MENA countries and draws policy conclusions.

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GLO Discussion Paper No. 693, 2020

Female Labor Force Participation in Five Selected MENA Countries: An Age-Period-Cohort Analysis (Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine and Tunisia) – Download PDF
by Lassassi, Moundir & Tansel, Aysit

GLO Fellows Moundir Lassassi and Aysit Tansel

Author Abstract: This paper considers the female labor force participation (FLFP) behavior over the past decade in five MENA countries namely, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine and Tunisia. Low FLFP rates in these countries, as it is in other MENA countries, are well documented. We conduct synthetic panel analysis using age-period-cohort (APC) methodology and decompose FLFP rates into age, period and cohort effects. We present our results with Hanoch-Honig/Deaton-Paxson normalization and maximum entropy estimation approaches to the APC methodology in order to observe robustness of our results. We first study the aggregate FLFP and note the differentials in age, period and cohort effects across the countries we consider. The analysis is carried also out by rural/urban regional differentiation, marital status and educational attainment. Implications of our results for possible government policies to increase FLFP rates are discussed.

GLO Discussion Papers are research and policy papers of the GLO Network which are widely circulated to encourage discussion. Provided in cooperation with EconStor, a service of the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, GLO Discussion Papers are among others listed in RePEc (see IDEAS,  EconPapers). Complete list of all GLO DPs – downloadable for free.

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