Africa Technical Families Human Development Network Social Protection Team

Produced by the Research Support Team The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent. Policy Research Working Paper 4954 This paper provides a snapshot of Mauritania’s labor mar-ket using data from the 2004 national household survey. The results show that the labor market is characterized by lower participation rates, lower employment-to-popula-tion rates, and relatively higher unemployment rates than in neighboring countries. The non poor fare better in the labor market than the poor. Although the labor force participation of the poor is higher than that of the non poor, the poor display a higher unemployment rate and a lower employment rate than the non poor. The data also suggest a negative correlation between wage employment and poverty. Substantial differences in labor market indi-cators emerge when disaggregating the analysis by gender and age-group. Female non-participation is extremely This paper—a product of the Africa Technical Families, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network (Africa Region) and the Social Protection Team, Human Development Network—is part of a larger effort in the networks to analyze the labour markets of low-income countries. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web a