Oxfam, an international confederation of 21 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working together with partners and local communities in more than 90 countries in order to provide support to individuals who live in poverty and deprivation, released on October 11 the fourth edition of its “Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index (CRII)” report covering the year 2022. The report, a product of the collaboration between Development Finance International (DFI) and Oxfam, ranks governments worldwide based on the efforts they are making to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor. The index computed in the report relies on a database of relevant indicators covering a total of 161 countries and measuring government action in three critical areas, namely, public services spending (health, education and social protection), tax progressivity, and labour rights and progressivity. The social spending pillar covers spending on public services specifically, education, health, and social protection and has been shown to have a significant impact on reducing inequality. The progressive taxation component captures the effectiveness of progressive taxes in leading to resource redistribution in society as a key tool for governments to reduce inequality. Finally, the labour rights factor is embedded in the index computation as evidence strongly shows that higher wages to ordinary workers and more labour rights especially to women are essential for inequality reduction. In detail, for each of the three pillars, a country is assigned a score ranging between 0 and 1. These scores are then averaged to give the overall CRI score and respective ranking. Each pillar incorporates three levels of indicators, namely “policy commitment indicators” (measure the commitment of governments through their policies), “coverage or implementation indicators” (which look at the individuals covered and those who are not covered as a result of policy actions or how well a government implements these policies), and “impact indicators” (measure the impact of policy actions on the different inequality levels). The report mentioned that the COVID-19 pandemic has increased global inequality, with the poorest and most vulnerable individuals being affected the most by the disease and its severe economic impact. Furthermore, the report commented that the majority of the world’s governments were unable to take appropriate measures to mitigate the aforementioned rise in inequality. In details, the report stated that half of low and lower-middle income countries had to cut health spending during the pandemic, with half of the countries tracked by the index resorting to a 70% reduction in social spending hence widening the global inequality gap.

Globally, Norway ranked first in the CRII for the year 2022, trailed by Germany and Australia. On a regional basis, Tunisia topped the list of Arab countries in the 2022 CRII with a global rank of 49. Jordan came in second in the region (global rank: 54) and Algeria came third (global rank: 83). With respect to Lebanon, the country came in 121^st in this year’s index, ranking 108^th globally in “public services spending”, 150^th in “Tax Progressivity”, and 86^th in “labour rights and progressivity”. Nevertheless, the country performed poorly relative to its regional peers, occupying the 8^th place among 12 surveyed countries in the region, outperforming Yemen (global rank: 127), Mauritania (global rank: 136), Bahrain (global rank: 137), and Oman (global rank: 147). According to the report, Lebanon witnessed the third largest drop (60.3%) in tax productivity in the 2022 CRII, with Afghanistan and Congo reporting the largest drops (69.6% and 64.0% respectively). Similarly, Lebanon also saw the third largest drop (-20) in the labour coverage indicator rank, only preceded by Lesotho (-49) and Panama (-24).