Micro-Determinants of Informal Employment in the Middle East and North Africa Region
This note assesses the main micro?determinants of informal employment in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region from a human development stand point. It's main purpose is to quantify the patterns of labor informality (defined as the sh...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/843621468275089806/Micro-determinants-of-informal-employment-in-the-Middle-East-and-North-Africa-region http://hdl.handle.net/10986/26828 |
| Summary: | This note assesses the main
micro?determinants of informal employment in the Middle East
and North Africa (MENA) region from a human development
stand point. It's main purpose is to quantify the
patterns of labor informality (defined as the share of all
employment with no access to social security) according to
age, gender, education level, employment sector, profession,
marital status, employment status, and geographic area in a
selected group of countries in the region. Results indicate
that the size of the public sector and the size of the
agriculture sector are perhaps the main correlates of
informality in the region. Countries where agricultural
employment still constitutes a large share of overall
employment (such as Morocco and Yemen) are associated with
higher levels of overall informality. On the contrary,
countries with larger public sectors and more urbanized such
as Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon, display lower levels of
overall informality. The existence of a large public sector,
still associated with generous benefits and better
employment quality, creates an important segmentation
between public and private employment in many MENA
countries. Informality rates are very high among youth
between ages fifteen and twenty-four. After age twenty-four,
informality decreases rapidly until individuals reach prime
working age (forty to forty?five years). This rapid decrease
in informality rates goes hand in hand with a rapid increase
in public sector employment, suggesting that informal
workers enter into public sector jobs as they move from
youth into adulthood. Results also indicate that the average
worker in the informal sector is disadvantaged versus the
average worker in the formal sector, as they are uncovered
against social risks and are generally employed in
low-productivity/low pay jobs. |
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