COVID19 and the Value of Non-Monetary Job Attributes to Women:Evidence from A Choice Experiment in Egypt

Boosting low levels of female labor force participation remains a challenge in the MENA region. Women, especially after marriage and childbirth, typically forgo the labor market (LM), particularly when jobs/job offers are non-family-friendly. Especially for females, a job is perceived as a combined package of wages and non-monetary attributed. This paper relies on an attributebased discrete choice experiment using hypothetical job offers, as opposed to the employment situation pre and post the outbreak of the Coronavirus. The objective is to estimate the willingness to pay (WTP) distribution for non-monetary job attributes. An experiment was administered within a COVID-19 impact survey in Egypt (namely CETUS20) - 5 months into the outbreak of the pandemic, making it possible to measure the change in job preferences following the COVID19 health shock. The hypothetical choice method robustly identifies preferences, and overcomes challenges to estimate WTP for specific non-monetary job attributes using other methods. Our findings reveal that COVID-19 has led workers to value more positive job amenities, such as parttime jobs, flexible work, work from home and shorter commutes. With the increased burden of domestic work, females with children value the most jobs where they can work on a part-time basis. They would require to receive substantial increases to their current labor income to accept jobs with a non-family friendly set-up, such as the need to work in weekends or night-shifts. Interestingly, however, respondents in the experiment, particularly male workers, have perceived overtime as a positive job amenity. Their WTP for the latter increased post-COVID suggesting income challenges faced by workers post-COVID. Generally, a substantial proportion of our experiment's employed respondents accept the hypothetical job offers they receive during the interview (about 40% of the males and 70% of the females). More than 50% of those who accepted those offers would have never accepted them prior to COVID. Our results reveal the change in the value of employment to workers, particularly females, which comprises both the wage and the non-monetary attributes associated with employment