Income Inequality in the Arab Region: Data and Measurement, Patterns and Trends

Sami Bibi and Mustapha K. Nabli

Middle East Development Journal, 2009, vol. 1, issue 2, 275-314

Abstract: This paper provides a review of empirical knowledge about income inequality in the Arab region, focusing primarily on the issues of data and measurement, and the characterization of its patterns and trends. The review shows good progress in the availability of data and quality of measurement. However, the region remains far behind progress being achieved worldwide in terms of coverage and comparability across countries, improvements in quality and content of data, and, more importantly, accessibility of available micro-data to scholars. Within these data constraints and limitations, the available evidence shows moderately high levels of inequality in terms of household expenditure compared to other regions of the world. The patterns of inequality show quite significant variation across countries. One striking result is the weak time variability of the inequality indexes in most of the countries of the region. Alternative measures of welfare distribution such as of horizontal inequality, polarization or inequality of opportunity have been widely used worldwide to supplement the Lorentz-based inequality criteria, but such measures are very scarce in Arab countries. We finally offer suggestions for a research agenda to better our understanding about the nature and determinants of inequality in the region.

Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (32)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1142/S1793812009000139 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rmdjxx:v:1:y:2009:i:2:p:275-314

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rmdj20

DOI: 10.1142/S1793812009000139

Access Statistics for this article

Middle East Development Journal is currently edited by Raimundo Soto

More articles in Middle East Development Journal from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().