Hailey Kurth

90019455

Dr. Mona Said

15 March 2022

Youth Bulge Midterm

The youth bulge has been, what some might call, an ongoing crisis in the Middle East
North Africa (MENA) region. This crisis began in the late twentieth century when there was a
steep decline in infant mortality rates in the region, but steady, some years increasing, fertility
rates. Due to this, more children were being born and surviving in the region than ever before,
and by the 2000s the effects of this were starting to be felt across the region. The youth bulge is
neither inherently good nor bad, however, it does have severe consequences on the youth,
politics, and the economy of the region. This paper will analyze the causes and consequences of
the youth bulge, particularly in Egypt, and potential ways to remedy the negative externalities.

In my research, I have found that, while many factors can continue to the youth bulge,
there is one main cause. The sharp, steady decline in infant mortality rates while continuing to
have steady, climbing fertility rates among women of the MENA region. So, women were still
having the same number of babies, but they were all surviving due to modern medical advances.
Some reason From 1950 to 2012, Egypt ‘has grown over 378 percent,” with a population over 80
million in 2012 to now over 100 million today (LaGraffe). Today, in the MENA region, we are
still seeing the effects of the youth bulge from the late twentieth century through, what the
literature refers to as, the “echo” (Krafft). The “echo” began in 2006 when the women born
during the youth bulge were finally at the age, they could have children. Thus, creating the echo.
Typically, infant mortality rates and fertility rates have a linear relationship, but “in Egypt in
particular, in the echo of the youth bulge [fertility] rates were not declining and there was a
larger number of women able to have children because there are just more women” meaning the
MENA region is still not seeing a decline in fertility rates (Krafft). This rapid, continual
population increase has many consequences seen throughout the region.
 The youth bulge and the echo have caused a high rate of unemployment among the youth.
There are not enough jobs to keep up with the increase in population and the MENA region is
not creating jobs fast enough. The World Bank estimated in 2010 that in the region by 2020 “the
number of jobs required to absorb the new labour market entrants […] is around 100 million”
(Edwards). Unemployment has been a huge problem and part of the cause for this is skill
mismatches. A skill mismatch is when the skills individuals have don’t align with the skills
sought out by employers. This is a problem in Egypt because there is a lack of investment in
human capital. In 2016, the youth unemployment rate in Egypt was 26.7% with women, highly
educated individuals, and new entrants being the groups most affected by the high
unemployment rate (Helmy). In Egypt, “48% of Egyptian youth are working in jobs that do not
match their education,” they are usually overeducated with college graduates ten times more
likely to be unemployed than their uneducated counterparts (Helmy). Another issue Egypt faces
with creating jobs is that public sector jobs in Egypt have better wages, job security, and benefits
than the private sector. This encourages people, especially women, to seek out jobs in the public
sector than in the private sector which has more room for growth, job creation, and productivity:
“the public sector accounted for about one-third of total employment […] about 35% in Jordan
and Egypt” (Ahmed). This is a strong indicator that a large part of the workforce is employed in
the public sector, and this is only further proved when “public sector shares are even higher as a
percentage of nonagricultural employment – reaching 42% in Jordan and 70% in Egypt”
(Ahmed). This contributes to the high youth unemployment rate because the public sector has
significantly less opportunity for job creation than the private sector. Along with high
unemployment rates often comes high rates of poverty, and this is an issue for the youth around
the world as well: “young people make up almost 60 percent of the poor in the world (LaGraffe).
In 2012, Egypt has a population of 20 million between the ages of 18 and 29, and 51.3% of this
youth population live in poverty (Mena). High unemployment and high rates of poverty among
youth are consequences of the youth bulge leaving many countries in the MENA region unsure
of how to alleviate these pressures.

While researching, I found it quite surprising how so few policies have been enacted by
governments to alleviate these issues. Many responses from governments focus mostly on the
training and education of the youth often leaving out the underemployed or working poor and
contributes further to skill mismatch because many young people are overqualified (LaGraffe).
Between 2000 and 2015 governments in the MENA region focused more on this issue. Strategies
to help the youth were developed in several countries, these strategies covered “multiple
dimensions of youth policy, including migration, health, education, employment, culture, and
civic and political participation” (Kabbani). However, only Lebanon, Morocco, and Yemen
currently have any youth strategy employed, and Yemen was the only country to have a strategy
specifically for youth unemployment. In Egypt, a national youth strategy was being drafted in
2009 by the Ministry of State for Youth Affairs, but then was never officially adopted by the
government (Kabbani). According to the Brookings Institute, is that countries in this region
could not properly figure out how to implement youth strategies effectively. The Brookings
institutes states “Three impediments to successful implementation stand out across the region:
(1) the political economy, especially as it relates to job creation; (2) weak implementation
mechanisms and coordination among development actors; and (3) insufficient use of evidence in
designing and implementing policies and programs” (Kabbani). While action has seemingly been
taken by the governments of the MENA region, there has been little improvement seen from this
for the youth, or, in some countries, no policies come to fruition.

The youth bulge and the “echo” have had major, long-term consequences for the region
and Egypt specifically. I do not believe there is one policy that can be enacted to solve this issue,
and I do not believe this issue can be solved quickly. In Egypt, there are several steps I believe
the government could take to slow down population growth and to provide more employment to
the youth. Women should be focused on these policies because, ultimately, they are the ones
having children. Providing better education for women is the first step because typically the
more educated a woman is, the fewer children she has. This will also help with what I believe the
next steps are of increasing women’s time outside of the home and increased economic activities
for women. This can include encouraging part-time work, but most importantly good maternity
leave policies and better access to childcare. By providing these two things, women can work
and have children, which increases their time outside of the home. I also believe the government
should enact better family planning initiatives and easier access to contraceptives, so people are
making more informed, active choices on getting pregnant. Lastly, I believe the government or
private firms need to focus on tailoring education and/or training programs to the needs of Egypt,
instead of just “educating everyone.” This way Egypt will see less skill mismatch and fewer
under/overeducated workers. Also, it can encourage more workers in the private sector which
has the ability for faster job creation. These reforms will take a significant amount of planning
and effective government policy, but I truly believe this will help curb the negative consequences
of the youth bulge.

Works Cited
Ahmed, Masood. “Youth Unemployment in the MENA Region: Determinants and Challenges by
Masood Ahmed, Director, Middle East and Central Asia Department, IMF; Dominique
Guillaume, Deputy Division Chief, IMF; Davide Furceri, Economist, IMF.” International
Monetary Fund, World Economic Forum, June 2012,
https://www.imf.org/external/np/vc/2012/061312.htm?id=186569.

Edwards, M. B. (2005). Migration in the Middle East and Mediterranean. University

Research Institute for Urban Environment and Human Resources.

Helmy, Imane. (2017). Building Skilled Labor force: The Case of Egypt.

Kabbani, Nader. “Youth Employment in the Middle East and North Africa: Revisiting and
Reframing the Challenge.” Brookings, Brookings Institution, 9 Mar. 2022,
https://www.brookings.edu/research/youth-employment-in-the-middle-east-and-north-
africa-revisiting-and-reframing-the-challenge/.

Krafft, Caroline & Assaad, Ragui. (2014). Beware of the Echo: The Impending Return of

Demographic Pressures in Egypt. Economic Research Forum Policy Perspective.

LaGraffe, Dan. “The Youth Bulge in Egypt: An Intersection of Demographics, Security, and the Arab

Spring.” Journal of Strategic Security, vol. 5, no. 2, University of South Florida Board of

Trustees, 2012, pp. 65–80, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26463960.

Mena. “Youth Are Quarter of Egypt's Population, and Half of Them Are Poor.” Egypt
Independent, Al-Masry Al-Youm, 12 Aug. 2012, https://egyptindependent.com/youth-are-
quarter-egypt-s-population-and-half-them-are-poor/.