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Female labor participation in the Arab world is low compared with the level of economic development of Arab countries. Beyond anecdotal evidence and cross-country studies, there is little evidence on what could explain this phenomenon. This paper uses the richest set of panel data available for any Arab country to date to model female labor participation in Morocco. The paper finds marriage, household inactivity rates, secondary education, and gross domestic product per capita to lower female labor participation rates. It also finds that the category urban educated women with secondary education explains better than others the low level of female labor participation. These surprising findings are robust to different estimators, endogeneity tests, different specifications of the female labor participation equations, and different sources of data. The findings are also consistent with previous studies on the Middle East and North Africa region and on Morocco. The explanation seems to reside in the nature of economic growth and gender norms. Economic growth has not been labor intensive, has generated few jobs, and has not been in female-friendly sectors, resulting in weak demand for women, especially urban educated women with secondary education. And when men and women compete for scarce jobs, men may have priority access because of employers' and households' preferences.

Communities & Human Settlements --- Education --- Employment --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Housing & Human Habitats --- Labor Force Participation --- Labor Market --- Labor Markets --- Population Policies --- Primary Education --- Social Protections and Labor --- Teaching and Learning --- Unemployment

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• Reference Manager
• EndNote
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During the past 20 years, Morocco has implemented a wide range of macroeconomic, social, and labor market reforms that have delivered in terms of growth of gross domestic product and household welfare. Yet, these positive developments are not reflected by the main labor market indicators, a phenomenon observed elsewhere in developed and developing economies alike and labeled as "jobless growth." For the first time for Morocco, this paper uses quarterly panel data to investigate the question of labor mobility in an effort to determine whether people have moved to better sectors and jobs. The results point to significant labor mobility between labor statuses with quite distinct features across population groups. All groups experience some form of labor market mobility every quarter and women are as mobile as men. However, the transitions that women experience are very different from the transitions than men experience and women's performance is worse than men's performance in almost all aspects of labor mobility.

Communities & Human Settlements --- Employment --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Housing & Human Habitats --- Labor Force Participation --- Labor Market --- Labor Markets --- Labor Policies --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Markets & Market Access --- Population Policies --- Social Protections and Labor --- Unemployment