Verbreitete Armut ist nach wie vor eines der zentralen Probleme der arabischen Entwicklungsländer, das nicht nur auf begrenzte Erwerbsmöglichkeiten und geringe Einkommen zurückgeht. Große Teile der Bevölkerung verarmen auch deshalb immer wieder, weil sie keinen adäquaten Zugang zu...

Much has been written on the impact of the global financial crisis on Europe, Asia and the Americas but only little on the Arab states. This article makes an early attempt to take stock of recent developments in the Arab world and offers a systematic approach to disentangle the various...

The majority of people in the informal sector have no access to reliable social protection schemes. This holds for the Arab countries just like for other parts of the developing world despite the fact that several Arab countries have made attempts to raise the share of households covered by...

Human development laggs considerably behind economic development in all Arab countries. Countries with similar per-capita income levels in other parts of the world score on average much better with regards to most indicators for education, helath, social protection, sanitation and other elements...

The article’s subject is social protection in the Arab world. Giving the example of Egypt, it asks why poverty is so widespread and why – despite the country’s numerous sophisticated social protection systems – social risks are a major contributing factor to it. It concludes that reforms...

Due to the modernisation of societies, traditional social security systems are getting weaker and less reliable. The state must therefore step in and provide social protection to its citizens. Whether they effectively do or not depends on their financial and technical capacities adn on the...

The generous social health protection systems that Arab governments have built up during the 1960s and 1970s continue to exist but they lack the funds needed to function in the way they did twenty years ago. Even more serious however is the fact that available funds are inefficiently distributed...