Despite Egypt’s economic growth and educational expansion, gender inequalities anda lack of economic opportunities for young adults persist. Existing studies on socialchange in Egypt often rely on aggregate trend indicators or focus on isolated point-in-time work or family outcomes. This study adopts a life course perspective to (1)trace cohort changes in work-family life courses for individuals born between 1956and 1988 (N=19,970) from 1965 to 2018, (2) assess gender inequality trends in lifecourses across cohorts, and (3) link different life course patterns to aggregate devel-opment indicators. Using retrospective data from the Egyptian Labor Market Panel,multichannel sequence and cluster analyses identify ten typical life course profilesthat can be divided into: a state-structured life course; and various manifestations offamily- and market-structured life courses. The economically secure state-structuredlife course declined in favor of rising market-structured and family-structured lifecourses. Gender inequality in employment increased across cohorts. GDP growth wasassociated with economically insecure market-structured life courses for men andfamily-structured life courses of economic inactivity for women. Cohort change in lifecourses was most rapid in the transition period from authoritarian socialism to un-regulated crony capitalism (1980–1990) when cohorts born in the 1970s reachedadulthood.