high-income countries, 88%, produce and export oil; they represent about 4% of CWANA's population. Over half, 63%, of CWANA countries are low income, with 85% of the region's population.

Highest per capita income was recorded for the Arabian Peninsula countries. Much higher than the world average, per capita income of the United Arab Emirates is US$23,770. It also has one of the lowest per capita annual growth rates, 1.60%. Kuwait has the second largest per capita income, US$19,506. Bahrain follows with US$12,473; Saudi Arabia, US$9,608; and Oman, US$8,423. While these oil-rich Arab countries are classified high income according to the World Bank classification, the great majority of CWANA countries are considered lower middle income.

Countries belonging to Central Asia and the Caucasus have low incomes. The lowest income recorded was for Tajikistan, only US$118, with an annual growth rate of 9.40%. Kyrgyzstan also had a small per capita income, US$350. Kazakhstan had the largest in the subregion, US$1,966.

Pakistan had the lowest per capita income in Southwest Asia, US$556, with an annual growth rate of 4.2%. The second lowest, about double that of Pakistan, was for Syria, US$1,180. The largest per capita incomes in the subregion were for Iran, US$2,104, and Jordan, US$1,888.

In North Africa, Libya had the highest per capita income, US$4,965; Tunisia had US$2,366, followed by Algeria, US$2,062, and Morocco, US$1,394. The lowest was Mauritania, US$450 (World Bank, 2006).

Income distribution and poverty

Although average economic growth rates have been favorable, the high population growth rate of these last decades, 2.3%, has resulted in only a small net improvement. Moreover, there is now evidence of persistent income and nonincome inequality, which seriously limits prospects for pro-poor growth. The lack of data on income distribution over time limits considerably any research on the evolution of income distribution in this part of the world. Only a snapshot for the last decade can be given. The gap between the 10% of the population with the highest income and the 20% with the lowest income is tremendous. The greatest inequality is in Iran, where the highest 10% has 33.7% of the total national income and the lowest 20% has only 5.1%. Tunisia, Turkey and Turkmenistan have similar income distribution. In Algeria, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan this gap is less profound. According to the same data, Finland, Japan and Norway had smaller gaps for the same period, 22 to 23% for the highest 10% and 10 to 11% for the lowest 20 percent.

Poverty is a big problem in most CWANA countries. Linked to the incapacity of the urban economy to offer salaried work to most of the active population, 15-65 years of age, these countries face severe poverty problems. However, poverty statistics are not available for all CWANA countries and headcount indices have been estimated for only a few countries. The poverty line and survey year vary from country to country, so comparison among the countries should be treated with caution.

During the 1990s, half the populations in Mauritania (North Africa), Armenia, Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan

(Central Asia and Caucasus) were under the national poverty line. In Pakistan, Turkey and Uzbekistan the share of the population under the poverty line was a little less than 30%, while in Algeria, Morocco, Jordan and Egypt, it was between 12 and 19 percent. Tunisia stands out as the country with the fewest poor; its national population under the poverty line was only 8 percent. In all the countries that delivered a poverty headcount ratio, except Armenia and Azerbaijan, poverty is more widespread in rural than in urban areas. The tertiary sector together with informal activities offers more opportunity for urban populations to be better off than rural populations. Most rural areas are becoming more isolated from cash-generating activities with a consequent negative impact on rural poverty. In the countries where undernourishment is high (more than 35%) the percentage of poor people is high and the GDP per capita very low.

Reduced demand for labor in the Gulf states has exacerbated the rising unemployment in the region. This has had a dramatic impact on remittances from migrant workers, especially in Egypt and Yemen, who provided much of the Arab casual labor. Unfortunately, data are not available for all CWANA countries, to assess the real gravity of the current situation.

In 2004, most inflation rates in Arab countries were moderate or low, except in Egypt (8.1%), and Yemen (12.5%). Inflation has a negative effect on stable incomes, like salaries, wages and pensions. Consequently, inflation will increase poverty and inequality in income in Arab countries. Inflation can be either cost-pull or demand-pull, but poor and lower middle class incomes will be more affected. Also, economic reforms in the region usually increase inflation, especially at the beginning. Data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and collected from Arab governments showed the inflation rate in Algeria was about 38% in 2002, about 19.5% in Morocco in 2001 and at least 10.4% in Egypt in 2003 (IMF, 2005).

Human poverty index and human development index

The data for 2002 indicate that eight countries ranged between 30 and 48 on the human poverty index (Table 1-2), on a scale of 1-100, where the higher the score the more severe the poverty. Data calculated for the human development index for 2004 ranged from a low of 0.492 for Yemen to a high of 0.871 for Kuwait, on a scale of 0 to 1. Two-thirds of CWANA countries have a human development index higher than 0.7. Oil-producing countries have on average a human development index of 0.82, considered high in CWANA (World Bank, 2006).

1.2.3 Food security

The definition of food security, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), is the availability, accessibility, safety and sustainability of food. The self-sufficiency ratio is not a measure for food security if the country is capable of importing food. Most important is the availability of foreign currency to import food, in addition to foreign food aid. Grain storage capacity is important. Besides the purchasing power of per capita income-the real per capita income-farmers rely on the food they produce and factor in what it costs to produce it