Economic, welfare, demographic, and gender inequalities among selected Arab countries

The purpose of this research is to compare countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) against a selection of non-GCC Arab countries, using a large collection of data obtained from the United Nations’ latest Human Development Report. The comparisons between the two groups of countries include indicators on education, gender, demographics, health, economic performance, and trade. The GCC countries include Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The non-GCC Arab countries include Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen. Iraq is excluded because of unavailability of data. The results indicate that the GCC countries as a group outperform the non-GCC countries on a number of variables, and tend to vary less among themselves than do the non-GCC countries. The reason for the disparity is that the GCC countries are more market- based economies than the non-GCC countries.