Anexploitationof resources:the increasing disparitybetween theclassesinthe MiddleEast

The Middle East is a region which is largely impacted by its geographical location. Although it is disputed which countries make up the Middle East, those typically mentioned include: Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Egypt, Israel, JordanandSaudiArabiatonameafew.

In the news, the Middle East is usually reported on due towar,naturaldisasters(suchastherecentearthquakes in Turkey and Syria), or the lavish lifestyle some live. However, we rarely see reports on the socio-economic side of the Middle East - partially because it was previously believed that the Middle East was relatively equal in terms of the divide between the rich and the poor. However, there is not only a disparity between the classes in this notorious region, but also between genders, which can be quantified by the Gender InequalityIndex (GII) by the United Nations Development Programme(UNDP).

Oil is an abundant resource in the Middle East, and to put it into perspective, Saudi Arabia (2nd), Iraq (6th), Iran (7th), the UAE (8th) and Kuwait (10th) are in the top 10 for the world’s biggest oil producers. Whilst oil production can often be an indicator for the economics status of a country - for example the USA is the world’s biggest oil producer and ranked 1st for GDP in 2022this is not the case for any of the countries aforementioned. One large reason for this is that many countries in the Middle East lack skilled workers. That meant that although they were/are able to harvest the oil,thereisnoindustrywithintheMiddleEasttobeable to do anything with the oil. This can be represented by the fact that the Balance of Trade in the UAE is 290300 (AEDMillion)whereasboththeUKandUSareoperating with a negative Balance of Trade of –5681 (GBP Million) and –68.9 (USD Billion) respectively. The Balance of Trade represents the difference between a country’s imports and exports. This therefore shows that the UAE exports a lot more than it imports, further shown as it is the world’s largest petroleum exporter - whereas both theUKandtheUSimportmorethanitexports.

Thewarsandnaturaldisastersthatweoftenhearabout in the news also contribute to this problem, and during the Iran-Iraq wars, over three million refugees fled from Iran,Kuwaitandthesurroundingareas.

This contributes to the growing disparity between the classes in the Middle East. Currently, in the Middle East, the top 10% of earners earn around 64% of national wealth, which points to an unequal distribution of income. This differs from western Europe, where the top 10% account for 37% of national wealth. Historic wars waged in the Middle East, most of them off the back of the Arab-Israeli conflict beginning in 1948 and the IranIraqwar,meanthatmenhavedied(over1millionintotal from just those two wars), further contributing to the incentive to flee. As of 2021, 9.2 million Iraqis were situated in other countries. It is thought that over half of Arabs are employed in the informal sector, excluding them from protection such as minimum wage, health insurance, pensions and more. The IMF reports that unemployment is the highest in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, primarily amongst young workers, who, in the MENA region, make up around 50% of the population. This means that those in poverty are more likely to remain in poverty, as the lack of jobs/highly skilled jobs mean that it is hard to earn a decentwage.Warshavepaidalargepartinthelackof skilled workers, as refugees from Syria, Yemen and Iraq meantthatby2017,therewereover14.3millionchildren outofschool(accordingtotheUN).

In terms of classes, it seems like there is solely the rich and the poor with no in-between. The poor being in poverty or very close to it, where poverty is defined as the inability to purchase basic necessities (food, clean water,shelter,sanitaryproducts).Recentfiguressuggest that amongst Arab countries, almost 41% of the population is considered to be living in poverty and another 20% are at risk/classified as vulnerable. Previously, it was believed that the middle east was a relatively equal region, possibly because previous ways of measuring expenditure looked at the average per capita instead of considering the range between the richest and the poorest. The HDI indicator is used as a general measure for the welfare of the people in a country and stands for Human Development Index. Although the HDI indicator and other surveys indicate that the Middle East does not suffer from as much inequality as was recently suggested, an article written byLydiaAssouad,ThomasPikettyandFacundoAlvaredo argues that it is one of the most unequal regions in the world, and this can be shown through distributional national accounts. In 2019. Rami G Khouri published an articleaboutinequalityintheMiddleEast.Itagreeswith the position assumed by Assouad, Piketty and Alvaredo, who argue that the statistics in the Middle East are not trulyrepresentativeoftheeconomicsituation.