COVID-19

This section is dedicated to the on-going COVID-19 related work I am currently carrying out.

Context and Background: It has been well established in the literature that care and household activities, i.e. home production, are not equally shared among couples. Generally, even in developed countries, women still do most of the heavy lifting, even though men are stepping in more than earlier times in history. In developing countries, this biased division of labor clearly results in stagnant low female labor force participation rates, even though gender educational gaps have continued to close over the past two decades. Female labor supply in these communities rely heavily on access to external help in child care and household chores, and participation in jobs that favor flexibility and other family-friendly amenities.

A natural health crisis, such as COVID-19, is therefore very likely to impact women's empowerment and labor supply through these channels. This is likely to occur via the different aspects/dimensions of this shock, namely (i) social distancing, (ii) the closure of childcare services and schools and (iii) work from home of most men and women.

Data Collection: I am currently leading a project (with my co-author Rana Hendy) , where we are conducting a series of online and phone panel surveys to monitor the effect of the COVID-19 crisis on households, particularly provision of labor supply and time allocation within Egyptian households. Both phone and online surveys will include an economic impact questionnaire on male and female working populations (who used to be employed prior to COVID-19), with particular modules on employment, time-use and job search behavior/preferences. The multiple waves (every 4-6 months) of interviews with the same respondents aim to accurately capture changes over time, during and post (if applicable, depending on the evolution of the pandemic) in this rapidly developing crisis, particularly as economies start to reopen (return of children to schools, daycares and extra-curricular activities for example). The collected data will be used to research the impact of COVID-19 on females’ labor supply and time allocation. The following research questions/sub-projects are addressed:

I- COVID-19...Who will wash the dishes and change the diapers? Evidence from Egypt

We aim at assessing the adjustment of the intra-household resource allocation to the COVID-19 crisis, and hence the subsequent impact on female labor supply. We would like to evaluate the effect of COVID-19 on the female market and domestic labor supplies and how does COVID-19 affect (if any) both types of work? To be able to achieve this objective, we need to construct Time-use profiles using time-use data, which we aim to collect in this project. We aim to provide results on how differences in care and housework responsibilities can lead to larger post-shock gender differences in the Egyptian labor market. Specifically, we aim to quantify the response of domestic and labor supply to the COVID-19 crisis and if a differential response widens the gender earnings' gap in Egypt. The response of labor supply is aimed to be assessed both on the intensive and extensive margins.

Main Hypothesis of the study: The increase in the hours spent on care and household activities as a result of the COVID-19 crisis and related restrictions, has not been equally shared among couples, leading to a significant increase in the double burden faced by working women and consequently to a decrease in female’s labor supply.

II- Return to Work after Covid-19 and the value of non-pecuniary job attributes to women in Egypt

Following the most stylized version of the neoclassical model, labor supply decisions optimize a leisure-consumption trade-off. The main hypothesis of our study arises from the intuition that this very basic arbitrage becomes structurally different after COVID-19. With extra housework and care activities, e.g. childcare, how do women in particular generally value employment, particularly after most individuals have new working arrangements such as work from home among others. The main research question we try to answer in this study is how the desirability of a job's non-wage attributes evolved after COVID-19 shock? Particularly, how would that impact women's labor supply, decision to return to/remain in employment? To be able to achieve this objective, we need to document variations in employment status/working conditions following the outbreak of COVID-19, as well as rely on stated-preferences (reservation wages, reservation working conditions, attitudes towards hypothetical job offers) to estimate workers’ willingness-to-pay for a broad set of job characteristics. Therefore, the need to collect data on employment and job search preferences and behavior ,namely post covid-19

Main Hypothesis of the study: The COVID-19 crisis causes workers’, particularly females, to attach an even greater (relative to before COVID-19) importance to non-pecuniary job attributes – specifically flexible work arrangements such as work from home, short commuting distances, flexible working hours,…etc.