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The Middle East and North Africa region struggled to meet the employment aspirations of its increasingly educated youth in the aftermath of structural reforms. This article examines the evolution of initial labor market outcomes across pre- and post-reform cohorts of school leavers by education and socioeconomic status (SES) in Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia. Results show that formal jobs for educated new entrants are increasingly allocated according to SES, as measured by parents' education and father's occupation, in Egypt and Tunisia, but not in Jordan. In Egypt and Tunisia, the quality of initial jobs deteriorated for educated new entrants, particularly among those with lower SES. This rising tide of inequality of opportunity in employment may have contributed to the Arab Spring uprisings and remains an important source of frustration for youth and their families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although it is well‐established in the literature that unemployment is a labour market insertion problem in the Middle East and North Africa, the dynamics driving unemployment remain poorly understood. Using data from the Labor Market Panel Surveys in Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia, we offer insights into youth unemployment by studying flows into and out of unemployment. Female youth and Tunisian youth of both genders are particularly likely to experience long periods of unemployment. Educated youth from higher socioeconomic status backgrounds are more likely to experience unemployment, but there is not a strong relationship between background and unemployment duration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The educated have figured prominently in protests and elections in several Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries. The dominant explanation for this pattern centers on grievances and unfulfilled aspirations due to low education returns in the MENA. However, the pattern may simply reflect the unequal participation observed in many democracies where education provides skills and resources that facilitate political participation. This article compares the roles of skills and grievances in explaining the relationship between education and youth political participation during and after the Arab Spring. We use youth surveys with detailed data on education and political participation from Egypt and Tunisia. We control for parental education and family background to partially account for the potential of background to drive the education and participation relationship. Overall, our results are consistent with the skill channel and lend little support to the grievance channel. Our findings raise concerns about the exclusion of uneducated youth from both unconventional and conventional political participation in MENA politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]