Schooling Investments and Gender Gap in Schooling in the MENA Countries: An International Perspective

Results from this cross-country study indicate that there are no simple patterns in how investment in schooling in the MENA countries differs from international experience. The regression results for 1965 and for 1994 show a wide diversity in enrollments at the primary and secondary school levels in comparison with international experience. Some MENA countries, such as Egypt and Turkey, are found to be relatively high achievers at the basic levels of education in 1994. Others, such as Morocco and Saudi Arabia, are found to be relatively low achievers. However, the MENA countries as a group tended to have relatively high gender gaps at the primary and secondary levels in both years. In 1994, Egypt, Iran, Morocco, Oman and Turkey had gender gaps that were significantly high in comparison with international experience. These results were found to be sensitive to whether there was control for literacy in addition to per capita income. With control for literacy, the performance of the low-literacy MENA countries tended to improve for total enrollments and for the gender gap at each school level. With control for literacy, however, individual countries within the MENA group continued to show widely diverse performances. Between 1965 and 1994, countries like Egypt had some of the largest relative increases in schooling investments, while countries like Algeria had some of the smallest relative increases in schooling investments.