Migration scenarios: turkey, egypt and Morocco 279
Welfare and education
The Human Development Report ranks Morocco at 114, thus putting the
country in last place in the list of North African states, far below Tunisia (81),
Algeria (84) and even Egypt (101) (UNDP 2010). The def icits may be found in its
GDP, the health sector – which is considered inadequate – and in education,
one of the country’s major weak points. The adult-literacy rate lies at around
56 per cent; women have an even lower rate of 40 per cent (World Bank 2008).
The rate of persons receiving secondary and tertiary education lies far below
that of other North African and Arab states. The World Bank has calculated
that some 2.5 million children, above all, girls from rural areas, do not attend
school at all (Library of Congress 2006; World Bank 2008).
Morocco has a welfare system that provides for employees in old age,
when pregnant or when sick; for civil servants there is a separate insur-
ance system. Not included are the self-employed. Social security is funded
through the contributions of employees and employers. The National Social
Security Fund has been responsible for gathering and distributing the funds
since 1961. How many employees actually pay into this fund is unknown but,
from the information provided by the fund itself, it would appear that the
residents of the regions of Casablanca and of Rabat, in particular, participate
in the system (48 and 13 per cent, respectively, of all participating employees
nationwide). One could infer from this statistic that higher earners, espe-
cially in urban areas, are participating. To take part in the system, one has
to earn at least the off icial minimum wage, which is not the case for vast
swathes of the population. Another condition is legal employment (CNSS
2002; Library of Congress 2006; SSPTW 2007). Generally speaking, there is
a large social divide in Morocco’s population.
9.5.2 Three scenarios on the development of Morocco’s migration
potential
Maintenance of the status quo (scenario 1)
The f irst scenario assumes that the status quo is more or less continued
into the future. It presumes that the price of phosphate remains stable
and that the oil price experiences no major ups and downs. For economic
development in Morocco, it is also particularly essential that neither the
textile nor the tourism industries collapse. Making this assumption for
tourism seems realistic, the only caveat being possible terror attacks. In
this scenario, GPD rises at an annual rate of 2.5 per cent through to 2023
and of 3 per cent from 2024 to 2030 because of the positive development in
the textile industry and the sustainable establishment of the (few) foreign