What is the benefit of Palestinian female education?
- Sep 9, 2014
- 2 min read
As I continue to work on this paper using the SWTS of Palestine by the ILO, I've started to analyze what causes some young people to have a harder time finding a job than others. Specifically, looking at the data set fully 36% of young people who have finished their schooling go directly from schooling into looking for a job. Twenty five percent or so are able to start work immediately after finishing and about another 30% go directly into home duties (all of these are women, so that accounts for 2/3 of all women in the sample). Thus, while most men either start working or looking for work, most women start domestic duties or start looking for work, while very few find work. See the figure below. Now, these sorts of gender disparities have been seen throughout the region, using a variety of data sets. One of the unique characteristics of this data set, though is that one can tack exactly how long does it take individuals to move from one of these states (for example unemployment) into another one. From there, researchers can begin to see what other factors are correlated with the pattern of leaving the state of unemployment. This next graph looks at the young women (15-29) only in the sample and then shows their activity based upon their father's level of schooling. As can be seen by this figure, the picture looks very different for those whose fathers have at least an intermediate diploma. Women who have more educated fathers are less likely to go directly into home duties and are more likely to be looking for a job immediately following school. On the other hand, just an intermediate diploma doesn't help one to actually find a job. Young women whose fathers have a BA or more, however, are more than twice as likely to end up with a job immediately after finishing schooling compared to any other group. Now the question becomes, what about mother's schooling? Development economists generally agree that investment in female schooling yields a higher public return than investment in male schooling because even if women primarily become mothers, their role in taking care of the health and education of the next generation develops more human capital than male schooling which yields mostly private returns. What is remarkable about this graph is that for women, at least, educating mothers through the secondary and especially the intermediate diploma level gives much higher returns in the next generation of women than does educating men through that level. While a father having a secondary degree only slightly improves the likelihood that a young woman will find a job, a mother having a secondary degree more than doubles the likelihood compared to preparatory or less schooling for the mother. Thus, while we can say that men's education does matter in determining labor market outcomes of Palestinian women, it is women's education that matters even more.
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