Poverty Assessment in Low-, Medium- and High-Income Arab Countries: Yemen, Egypt and Bahrain

Karima Korayem 
(Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt)

Abstract: Bahrain, Egypt and Yemen differ significantly in their population size, per capita income, and output production per sectors. Three questions are raised in this paper: First, do those structural differences affect the type of poverty prevailing and its relative spread among the population? Second, what are the main causes of poverty in the three countries and how different they are, given the structural dissimilarity among them? Third, what are the poverty reduction policies applied in the three countries, and how do they differ among themselves? The paper addresses the first question by estimating and assessing the extent and type of poverty prevailing in the three countries, differentiating between absolute and relative poverty. For the second question, the direct and indirect causes of poverty on the macro-level are pointed out theoretically, and the application of those causes to the three countries are examined to find out whether, being rich or poor, has its impact on those causes in the country concerned. For the third question, the paper assesses the poverty eradication policies applied in each of the three countries.

Key words: Arab countries; poverty; causes; policy measures

JEL codes: O200