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School-to-work transitions for egypt's youth
Ragui Assaad from Humphrey School of Public Affairs, at the University of Minnesota, argues that structural reforms result in increasingly difficult and unequal school-to-work transitions for Egypt's youth. Egypt adopted a series of structural reforms since the 1990s designed to curb the size of the public sector and place the economy on a market- oriented trajectory. While these reforms succeeded in shrinking the size of the public workforce from 39% of total employment in 1998 to 26% in 2018, they failed to ignite job creation in the private sector (Ragui Assaad, AlSharawy, and Salemi 2022; Amer, Selwaness, and Zaki 2021). The share of formal private wage employment in total employment increased marginally from 8% in 1998 to 12% in 2018, while overall employment failed to keep up with population growth (Ragui Assaad, AlSharawy, and Salemi 2022).

The school-to-work transition is a crucial life stage for young people, and research has often shown that this stage has important effects on their entire life courses. In recent years, young people willing to enter the labour market have been challenged by increasing uncertainty and comparatively high unemployment. These labour market trends have been attributed to several structural changes, including globalisation, rise in international competition, technological change and the recent economic crisis. At the same time, the structure of labour supply has changed. Tertiary education in EU Member States has substantially expanded and the educational attainment of recent female graduates is now at parity or even exceeds that of their male counterparts. However, research has also demonstrated that even with considerable gains in education, women continue to have unequal labour market outcomes. Isolating gender differences in the transition from school to work and examining why these differences may emerge, has been largely ignored until now. Our report uses directly comparable data across the EU to examine whether there is a gendered transition from school to work, which can provide evidence to allow nations to reform their social welfare systems in a more tailored way by learning from each other and identifying policies and institutional systems that work the best. For our empirical analyses, we draw on the EU Labour Force Survey 2009 ad hoc module 2009 'Entry of Young People into the Labour Market', which focuses on individuals aged 15–34 years living in 27 EU Member States plus Iceland and Norway.

PurposeAims to consider whether the expansion of post‐compulsory education has led to greater benefits for members of one socio‐economic group than another.Design/methodology/approachUses a multinomial logit model of the choice of first destination, using the Youth Cohort Survey data for England and Wales, from 1985 to 1992.FindingsWhilst prior attainment has the strongest influence on selecting academic further education, participation rates into post‐compulsory education have also increased for young people of average ability. Interaction effects clearly show that for even the most able, the socio‐economic status of parents is an important influence on the choice of destination. The greatest benefit from the increased provision of post‐compulsory education after conditioning for ability has been to young people from high socio‐economic groups.Originality/valueProvides analysis, following investigation, of the main transmission mechanisms that determine choice at age 16.