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Salehi-Isfahani, D. (editor) Labour and Human Capital in the Middle East: Studies of Markets and Household Behavior, Ithaca Press in Association with the Economic Research Forum, Cairo. 2001, Readings, UK.
Most of the articles in this book were presented at the annual conference of the Economic Research Forum for the Arab countries, Iran and Turkey, held in Kuwait in September of 1996. The book has two parts. Part I surveys the performance of the labour markets for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region as a whole.
There are several major features of the labour markets in the MENA region as explored in the chapters in Part I. These features can be summarized as follows. First of all, high fertility rates of the recent past have led to high rates of population growth. As a result, most MENA countries experience a high labour force growth rate, which is expected to continue in the coming decades. This exacerbates the unemployment problems, especially for the new entrants in the labour market. The proportion of the unemployed who are first time job seekers is very high in the region. Low levels of education, which are lower than that of comparable middle income countries, is another major feature of the MENA labour markets. The illiteracy rate, especially of women, is very high in several MENA countries. The gender differences in human capital in the region are among the highest in the world. The third major feature is the low labour force participation rates for women; it is an average of 10% for the region. In most MENA countries, women's employment is mainly among the educated in the public sector. There are measurement and definitional problems in women's work. The fourth major feature of the region's labour markets is the existence of a large informal sector. Urban informal sector employment plays a major role in labour absorption and accounts for a sizable proportion of non-agricultural employment. The size of the formal private sector is small in most countries of the region. The fifth major feature of the MENA labour markets is the large share of public sector employment and the significant role of the state as a regulator in the labour market. Public sector employment is greater than...