This article surveys and discusses prominent protagonists of the debate on socio‐economic inequality in the Arab region, with a special focus on the World Bank and Egypt. According to official data, the region holds remarkably low Gini coefficients in a context of declining inequality. This contradicts the popular perception of high social inequality as a major cause of regional protests since the Arab Spring; hence the reference to a ‘puzzle’ in mainstream literature. The debate about the reality of social inequality in the region has developed since 2011 — particularly in regard to Egypt, where income and consumption data are periodically collected by means of household surveys. Inequality measures based on this method alone, while income taxation data are inaccessible, are highly questionable and conflict with various observations and calculations based on other indicators such as national accounts, executive income or house prices. Yet, the World Bank upholds official inequality findings in portraying the Arab upheaval as the revolt of a ‘middle class’ that aspires to greater business freedom, in consonance with the neoliberal worldview.

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关于“阿拉伯不平等之谜”：埃及的案例

本文调查并讨论了阿拉伯地区关于社会经济不平等问题辩论的主要人物，特别是世界银行和埃及。根据官方数据，在不平等程度下降的背景下，该地区的基尼系数非常低。自从“阿拉伯之春”以来，人们普遍认为社会高度不平等是引起地区抗议活动的主要原因，这与人们的看法相矛盾。因此，在主流文学中提到“困惑”。自2011年以来，关于该地区社会不平等现实的辩论一直在进行，尤其是在埃及，埃及通过家庭调查定期收集收入和消费数据。仅基于此方法的不平等措施无法获得所得税数据，是高度可疑的，并且与基于其他指标（例如国民账户，行政收入或房价）的各种观察和计算相冲突。然而，世界银行坚持官方的不平等调查结果，将阿拉伯的动荡描绘为渴望实现更大的商业自由的“中产阶级”的反抗，与新自由主义世界观相呼应。