Gender, Work, and Family in the Middle East

This program of quantitative and qualitative research on gender, work, and family in the Middle East focused on youth employment and on the interaction between demographic and labor market processes.   Since one of the goals of this grant was to build research capacity within the Middle East, the project created two post-doctoral fellowships each year for promising researchers from the region who spent three to six months in Minnesota working on these issues with faculty affiliated with the MPC.  The research focused on the analysis of currently available household survey data and complementary qualitative data from interviews with households and employers.  The program involved collaboration with the Economic Research Forum for the Arab Countries, Iran, and Turkey, which helped identify and select the researchers, assisted in data collection activities, and organized a regional research workshop.  The project also worked in close cooperation with the Population Council, which took the lead on the qualitative research component.  The first phase of research focused on Egypt, where recent high quality survey data have become available.  Topics addressed included the relationship between child labor and school attendance and gender differences in the type and extent of child labor in Egypt.