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 21 the fifth edition of its “Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index (CRII)” report covering the year 2024. 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 relies on a database of relevant indicators covering a total of 164 countries and measuring government action in three critical areas, namely, public services spending (health, education and social protection), tax progressivity, and labor rights and wages. 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 labor rights factor is embedded in the index computation as evidence strongly shows that higher wages to ordinary workers and more labor 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 data availability on inequality has been on the decline during the last couple of years (especially during the COVID-19 pandemic era), with the most recent data for 28 countries dating back to more than a decade ago. Delving into more details, the report revealed that 84% of countries have decreased their spending on education, health and/or social protection, while 81% saw a deterioration in progressive taxation, tax collection and their impact on inequality. The report added that 90% of countries have seen a drop pertaining to progressive labor policy, quality jobs and/or labor income contribution.

Globally, Norway ranked first in the CRII for the year 2024, trailed by Canada and Australia. On a regional basis, Jordan topped the list of Arab countries in the 2024 CRII with a global rank of 43, followed by Tunisia (global rank: 59) and Algeria (global rank: 64). With respect to Lebanon, the country came in 125^th in the world in the 2024 CRII, ranking 113^th globally in “public services spending”, 154^th in “Tax Progressivity”, and 83^rd in “labor rights and wages”. Nevertheless, the country performed poorly relative to its regional peers, occupying the 9^th place among 12 surveyed countries in the region, outperforming Iraq (global rank: 131), Mauritania (global rank: 142), and Bahrain (global rank: 147). According to the report, Lebanon witnessed the ninth lowest tax productivity rate (11.4%) in the 2024 CRII. In addition, Lebanon was the second biggest performer in labor rights coverage in 2024, gaining 19 positions compared to its 2022 rank. Furthermore, Lebanon saw the second largest drop in vulnerable employment compared to the 2022 CRII (drop of 6.8 percentage points) with its vulnerable employment rate standing at 18.7% in the 2024 CRII.