Making Sense of the Poverty and Inequality Puzzle in Arab Countries

ESCWA is convening this Expert Group Meeting to review and enrich the findings of its report, Making Sense of the Poverty and Inequality Puzzle in Arab Countries. The meeting aims to bring together experts to assess the report’s analytical approach, discuss its policy implications, and ensure that its conclusions reflect diverse perspectives from across the region.

The discussion tackles the following themes:

1)       Approaches to measuring poverty and inequality using newly proposed benchmarks.

2)       Methods for assessing poverty and inequality in data-scarce contexts and in counterfactual scenarios.

3)       Meaningful country classifications to support the development of a general framework for poverty-reduction strategies.

4)       Case studies of successful policies for reducing different forms of economic poverty, with a focus on best practices, key drivers of transformation, lessons learned, and governance and policy arrangements that can inform South-South dialogue and peer learning.

5)       Poverty beyond income deprivation, including the links between income poverty and other multidimensional development challenges, drawing on ESCWA Development Challenges Index.