Addressing Human Capital Challenges: Assessing the Experiences of Four Countries in the Arab Region

R ecent studies have found that those educated in the Arab region are often ill prepared to work in a global economy. As a result, policymakers there are paying close attention to human capital development, the match between the population’s skills and those demanded in the labor market, and the quality of the education being provided. Defi ciencies in these areas threaten to undermine progress toward creating the type of society— a knowledge and information society—needed to eff ectively address increasingly complex 21st century issues related to community well-being and development. A study funded by the RAND Corporation has documented the measures taken by four countries—Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—to address human capital (the learning, abilities, skills, and knowledge of an individual) and labor market issues. Th ese countries (three in the Arabian Gulf and one, Lebanon, in the Levant) provide examples of the diversity and similarity of challenges faced by the region and responses to those challenges. Qatar and the UAE, with their similar geographic and cultural histories, share many demographic and economic characteristics and also face similar workforce challenges because of their reliance on imported labor to fi ll skill gaps in their citizen labor pools. Oman shares strong political and cultural similarities with Qatar and the UAE but diff ers from them in its lower dependence on natural resources for its wealth. Lebanon serves as a stark contrast to the Gulf countries because it is a major exporter of labor and is undergoing signifi cant rebuilding after a prolonged civil war. In conducting these four case studies, the researchers identifi ed the most pressing human capital issues for each country, catalogued the policy approaches to addressing them, and then examined the availability of resources for evaluatResearch Brief