A Time of Great Intensity: The Pandemic Effect on Work, Care Work and Subjective Wellbeing in MENA Countries

In 2020, a global pandemic and its ripple effects swept through the world and disrupted every economy worldwide. We study the effect of this pandemic on employment, care work, and subjective wellbeing (SWB), particularly for women, in four countries in one of the most understudied regions, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). We find that although employmentto-population ratios had an initial dip in the pandemic, they rose to pre-pandemic levels by February 2021. We, however, find that unemployment-to-population ratios for women rose during the pandemic and reached to two to three times their levels before the pandemic. We also find that about 40% of women reported a rise in their hours spent on childcare and housework during the pandemic. Finally, we find that controlling for individual characteristics and geographic-time fixed effectgs, the main factor associated with the SWB was the decline in household income. Men and women’s SWB in households that experienced a reduction in their income declined by 0.26 and 0.14 standard deviation, respectively. Increase in the time spent on housework was the second factor affecting women’s SWB. All other factors had no association with SWB. The implications of the results are discussed.