# **Conclusions**

The paper has tested some of the possible predictors of FLP in Morocco based on long-term theories and more recent evidence on emerging economies and using the most comprehensive set of data available for any MENA country to date.

The statistical overview depicted a country that performed well in terms of macro and microeconomic developments and much less well in terms of labor market outcomes, particularly for women. FLP rates declined slowly but steadily between 1999 and 2012 and a recent work on labor mobility in Morocco (Verme at al., 2014) found women to have performed worse than men on all dimensions of labor mobility considered. A recent study on FLP in MENA countries (Verme, 2014) also found Morocco to underperform comparatively to other countries at similar levels of economic development. This paper tried to better understand some of the medium and short-term factors that may help to explain such performance.

From the regional panel models, we concluded that GDP growth has not attracted more women in the labor market in Morocco. This is consistent with previous findings about labor mobility, which indicated that growth did not really result in substantial labor market gains and women lost relative to men. It is also clear that a middle education level leads to lower FLP rates as compared to no education or higher education. This finding was confirmed by the short-term model for both urban and rural areas and can possibly be explained in terms of poor performance of strategic sectors for women’s employment such as manufacturing and services. Morocco did grow but in low productivity sectors that did not improve employment overall, favored men rather than women and favored uneducated rather than secondary educated women. We also know from previous studies that tertiary educated women who work tend to be employed in the public sector.

Age is clearly hump-shaped in FLP and the turning point when FLP starts to decline is around the age of 25. This is a finding common to the MENA region and is explained by marriage. After controlling for marriage, having an active spouse increases the probability of participation in both urban and rural areas. Children also play an important role for FLP but differently from advanced economies. Children under the age of six is not a major constraint to FLP if the household also has children in age 6-17 out of school and out of work. In other words, the pervasive phenomenon of female children out of work and education can result in a better participation rate of older women. This result highlights a phenomenon that is likely to constrain female participation for generations to come. Indeed, having more than a third of the other women above the age of 15 in the household inactive reduces the probability of participation. Together with the result on active spouses and people above 60 inactive, this result can be read as a “clustering” of women living in households with very low levels of activity among the young and the old, probably very poor households most likely to live in urban areas.

Overall, the key group that explains low FLP in Morocco is married educated women in urban areas. This group is not likely to participate mainly because of marriage and because they have an education level matching sectors that are not growing. In addition, educated women are likely to marry educated men whose income may be sufficient to support their families, a factor that may further discourage women from seeking work. In a paper on relative deprivation in Morocco, 19