The Determinants of Young Women’s Value in the Marriage Market: The Role of Education

11-11-2018
Author(s): Dina Abdel Fattah, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, the American University in Cairo
Publication Number: ECES-WP197-E

The unique nature of marriage in the Arab region has generated a range of stylized facts that may not be very pertinent to Western societies. An example of which is the importance of marriage itself, the problematic delay in marriage as well as the costs accompanying marriage.
These issues have all been relevant to the Arab world but not as germane to most of the Western world. The analysis in this paper reinforces the role of the marriage market in explaining the low participation of females in the labour market, in addition to the role of the socially popular phenomena of circumcision and kinship marriage.