Tremendous opportunity for economic growth in MENA |
| View as a PDF  English | Arabic |
Page 1 of 3
|
Take advantage of MENA’s demographic “window of opportunity”
The MENA region has about 100 million young people aged 12-24. The number of young people in these countries will peak in the next 25 years. Countries differ—for instance, Egypt is set to experience an extended peak between 2010 and 2030, while Iraq and Yemen will not peak for 20 years or more. WDR 2007 notes that the expected decline in dependency (increase in working age population relative to non-working age population) offers a tremendous opportunity for economic growth in MENA, provided that the greater labor supply is productively employed, and that saving and investment increase. However, an increase in the number of young people does not automatically translate into dividends. Whether MENA countries will repeat the progress of the Asian economies—which have already taken advantage of their fast-growing working age population—will depend to a large extent on the extent of improvement in the overall skills of the labor force, built largely in youth. Some progress has occurred in the region—countries in MENA have increased schooling among both young men and young women. However, the speed at which the demographic opportunity is approaching presents considerable challenges for getting educational and economic building blocks in place in time to benefit from the opportunity. If these challenges are not met more urgently than is currently the trend in many countries, they could further contribute to an unstable environment. If the gap between young people’s education, energy, and hopes and the limited number of opportunities that actually exist for them becomes wider, these young people are likely to become increasingly frustrated and disenfranchised.
Important challenges ahead | | More than one in four people are in search of jobs in MENA Average unemployment rates are highest among both youth and adults in MENA, when compared to all other developing regions. The share of young people among the region’s unemployed is higher than 50 percent in most countries. In Egypt, Qatar and Syria, youth make up more than 60 percent of the unemployed. In Tunisia, the unemployment rate for 20-24 year olds is more than three times higher then that for people above 40.
And low labor force participation rate among females persists, even among younger cohorts with higher educational attainment. |
|
Next page .gif)
|
|
| |
RSS