The onset of the new millennium saw a welcome reversal of fortunes in the Arab world after nearly two decades of disappointing economic growth. The regional GDP increased in real terms by an average rate of 6.3 percent in 2006, up from 4.6 percent during the first four years of the decade and from only 1.7 percent during the second half of the 1990s. On a per capita income basis, the region grew at an average of 4.2 percent in 2006, the highest level recorded in the last two decades. Unemployment declined from more than 14 percent in the late 1990s — when it was twice as high as the world’s average rate of unemployment — to 10 percent by 2005. In fact, the share of youth among the unemployed, which had been increasing since the 1970s, was also reduced. The euphoria of the last 10 years came into question
