Special Session on Transition in the Life Course in MENA:

Discussion of Papers PresentedKathryn M. Yount

Economic Research Forum annual meeting

March 18-20, 2017

Amman Jordan

Three papers part of this Special Session

Assaad et al.

• Effect of AFM on women’s employment in Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia

• Early marriage defined as before median AFM

• Examine different types of work

• Endogenize marriage decision using IV approach

Nazin and Ramadan

• Assn of premarital bargaining power (Pre-MBP) on Post-MBP in Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia

• PreMBP: individual and marital attributes (dowry pymt, pymt on divorce, etc)

• PMBP: decision-making

• Effect of work in marriage timing for women and men in Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia

• Discrete time hazard for age at first marriage, IV approach to control for endogeneity of employment

Krafft and Assaad

Assaad et al. set up of the paper

Characteristics of Women’s Employment

Egypt Jordan Tunisia

Employment rates 18 13 20

Unemployment rates 20-30 40 40

Gov’t employment(among the employed)

52 43 --

Median age at first marriage

22 22 27

• Difficulty of reconciling work with domestic duties assumed to be a key reason for low wage work among women in MENA

• Unlike prior papers, this paper takes a multivariate approach and accounts for the endo-geneity of the marriage decision

Assaad et al. key findings

Primary analyses of AFM and work outcomes

• Marriage by median age significantly negatively related to market work, wage work, private and public wage work for all 3 countries.

• Marriage by median age reduces the probability of working for women by 47% in Jordan, 33% in Tunisia, and 16% in Egypt

• Much of this effect on work is due to a reduction in the probability of private work: 70% in Jordan, 57% in Tunisia, 40% in Egypt

• Differences in effects likely due to differences in the availability of self-employment opportunities across three countries

Assaad et al. key findings

Exploration of reasons for observed empirical relationships

• Domestic duties

• Domestic and market hours

• Length of paid / unpaid maternity leave

• Primary / secondary child care providers

• Work place environment

• Commutes to work

Assaad et al. comments

• Justification for IVs? How do they perform? Implications for analysis?1. Localized F-to-M sex ratios: female 5-yr/ male 5-yr prior cohort to account for

spousal age differences; computed at different administrative levels – so does this IV capture “marriage market squeeze” equally well across contexts?

2. Ratio of female siblings to all siblings to capture “exogenous” measure of natal household structure that may affect marriage timing for different female siblings; to what extent is gender composition of children “exogenous” across each of the 3 contexts in the study (our research in Egypt suggests that parents are less likely to use contraception until they have a son)

3. IVs are “weak” according to standard tests performed by authors: To what extent are the “similarities” in the results across different estimation strategies “reassuring” or simply the result of having weak instruments?

Assaad et al. comments

• Why is median age at first marriage measuring “early marriage”?

• Standard demographic definition of early marriage is < 18 years, very early marriage is < 15 years.

• Reasons for these cutoffs are developmental --- women are not physically, emotionally, or cognitively ready to be making decisions about marriage.

• Choice of cut-point for early marriage, at a minimum, should be justified beyond “empirical grounds” to capture substantive issues related to early marriage across contexts.

Assaad et al. comments

• Policy discussion is detailed but what is missing?• All recommendations for policy focus on improving the work conditions for

women rather than incentivizing men to play a more active role at home and in child care.

• Are we reinventing the Western policy wheel regarding women’s work?

• Policies that reduce discrimination in pay and in the workplace, making work environments more favorable for women might be systematically addressed.• Our own work in Qatar (a very different context) suggests that young women worry a lot

about the conditions of the work environment and implications for their “reputation” of working in the “wrong” environment.

• Anecdotal evidence suggests that women experience “sticky floors” and “glass ceilings” which may discourage entry into and retention in the workforce. Better analysis of workplace discrimination would go far to bring policy attention to this issue.

Assaad et al. comments

• Qualitative research could help to unpack mechanisms for the relationship between “early marriage” and work outcomes for women in these settings

• Recommend undertaking parallel qualitative data collection with the next LMPS to “unpack” some of the findings from the quantitative data analysis.

• Exploring mechanisms qualitatively will lead to innovations in future quantitative data collection and subsequent policy innovations for the region.

Nazim and Ramadan set up of paper

• Assess influence of pre-marital bargaining power (Pre-MBP) on Post-marital bargaining power (Post-MBP) across same 3 countries in MENA using same datasets

• Nice review of the economic and social science literature on the economics of marriage in MENA

• Methods include MIMIC SEM to estimate associations of main interest

• Pre-MBP measured with individual and “marital” characteristics, which recognizes marriage as a “family event” in region.

• “marital characteristics” contextualized to include conditions of the marriage contract, such as value of dowry/bride price, value of payment on divorce, value of ayma, and relative spousal characteristics

• Post-MBP measured as a decision-making latent construct

Nizam and Ramadan findings

• Main finding: association of PreMBP with PostMBP context specific

1. Tunisia: Marriage characteristics no significant influence on DMP

2. Egypt: living arrangements, divorce payment, and bride price significantly associated with DMP in expected directions

3. Jordan: Living arrangements, divorce payment associated with ↑ DMP

Bride price associated with ↓ DMP

Nizam and Ramadan comments

• Background would benefit from clearer conceptualization of the main constructs

1. Clearer conceptualization of the overall model

2. Naila Kabeer’s Resources-Agency-Achievements framework as a useful reference

• Why only one dimension of agency (decision-making) included in the analysis (and not freedom of movement or gender attitudes)?

Enabling Resources

Agency Achievements

Nizam and Ramadan comments

• Some aspects of the analytical strategy could be better clarified.1. How are the response options for DMP coded/recoded? Note that making a

decision “alone” could indicate a lack of support rather than agency.

2. Estimation of measurement model is unclear; could be based on tetrachoric correlation matrix with ordinal/binary DMP items

• More interpretation of the results is needed.1. For example, why does own schooling have little/no influence in Egypt and

Tunisia?

• Overall, interesting topic, provocative findings, need to elaborate the conceptual framing, methods, and interpretation of the findings

Krafft and Assaad setup of paper

• Examine the role of work in enabling or constraining marriage timing in same three countries, for men and women separately

• Men: employment and quality of employment matter for timing of marriage: effect of public-sector employment on increasing the hazard of marriage increases with controls for endogeneity of work.

• Women: Public-sector employment increases hazard of marriage with controls for the endogeneity of work.

• Implications: young people may wish to stay unemployed longer if it leads to a higher-quality job, opening opportunities for marriage

Krafft and Assaad key findings

• Methods1. Discrete-time proportional hazard models estimated separately for each

gender and country2. IV for endogeneity and 3-stage residual inclusion IV approach used because

of the non-continuous measurement scale of the endogenous explanatory variable and final outcome variable.

3. IV analysis focuses on effect of public-sector work b/c PSE is popular among young people and an instrument is available (proportion of adults working in public sector jobs in local labor market each year).

4. Use govt of birth and urban/rural dummies to capture time invariant aspects of localities related to employment opportunities.

5. Account for stock and flow of public employment opportunities with lagged and current community level employment variable.

Krafft and Assaad key findings

• Data1. Panel creation: Novel use of labor market histories and timing of marriage

variables from most recent cross-sectional LMPS data for all three countries to re-create panels; actual panel data also used for Egypt

2. Sample: For some analyses (e.g., to include marriage costs), the sample is restricted to those who are married. It would be helpful to comment on the implications of having those who married earlier being disproportionately represented in the sample

3. Recognize role for migration in delaying marriage, but data not available for migration except for Egypt, so omitted. Some detail on the influence of including migration on the estimates for Egypt would be useful.

Krafft and Assaad key findings

• Comparative descriptive analysis is interesting and informative --- reveals:• High employment for (especially married) men relative to (especially married)

women across all three settings.

• High share of public-sector employment among employed married women, high share of private sector employment among employed unmarried women, and high levels of private-sector employment among working men.

• Declines in public sector employment in Egypt and Jordan.

• High universality of ever-marriage in Egypt but not Jordan or Tunisia.

• Egyptian women marry earliest, at median age of ~21, compared to a median age at marriage of 33 in Tunisian men.

• Gender differences in the age-specific hazard of marriage also interesting, with hazard increasing then decreasing to almost 0 by age 35 for women across settings, and increasing then remaining at .1 to .2 for men in all settings.

Krafft and Assaad findings

• For MV models that do not account for endogeneity:• Men: Employment in general assoc. with increased hazard of marriage.

• Women: Public-sector work associated with EARLIER marriage; private-sector work associated with LATER marriage, in general.

• Concurrent work associated with higher hazard of marriage for men in Egypt and Jordan; delay in marriage for women; having held a job previously associated with higher hazard of marriage for women.

• Costs of marriage analysis – higher family share associated with increased hazard of marriage.

• For MV models that do account for endogenity:• Public-sector employment increases hazard for men AND women, generally.

Krafft and Assaad comments

• Implications of findings are well laid out, especially that contraction of public sector employment opportunities may delay marriage for women and men.

• Good contextualization of the findings in light of other economic conditions in these settings (e.g., changes in the housing market in Egypt may have opposite effect on marriage timing).

• Discussion is somewhat repetitive of the findings presented in the main results section; More summation, interpretation, and discussion of the implications of the results for research and policy would be helpful.

Krafft and Assaad comments

• IV analysis is restricted to public-sector employment exposure. There is a need to extend the analysis to other types of work, especially given the high levels of private-sector employment among men and unmarried women.

• What other work-place policies are informed by this analysis, e.g., improving conditions in private sector to retain unmarried women working in that sector?

• What about the influence of dual employment? E.g., influence of concurrent work in the public and private sectors on marriage timing?

• Since the IV analysis is restricted to public-sector employment, should the focus of the eventual paper be narrower?