How Political Unrest Affects Young People School-to-Work Transition? Evidence from Egypt

Rania Roushdy, Population Council

This paper updates the state of knowledge on young people school-to-work transition in Egypt in the wake of the January 25th revolution. The hard labor market conditions following the revolution have been widely documented in the news, but very little data have been available to appropriately analyze those effects. We use panel data from two rich nationally representative surveys: the 2009 and 2014 Survey of Young People in Egypt (SYPE). This new panel data offers unique opportunity to gain a before-and-after picture of youth employment conditions and returns to education during this critical period of Egypt’s history. The paper explores the revolution effect on probability of transiting to a first job, and the duration of this transition. It also investigates how the revolution affected job quality and job mobility among youth. We expect to provide evidence of the hardship position which young people have been facing during the 2009-2014 period.