http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/peopleandpower/2011/03/201131612514814636.html
Yemen is probably the hardest [state in the region] in terms of economic challenges and development challenges. The people of Yemen are the poorest in the region. The state in Yemen is by far the weakest, compared to Libya in the sense of [the] absence of a real state, real institutions.
I think that in a way, the grievances are similar, whether it is Egypt or Yemen or Libya or Tunisia, in that people are disempowered; people are marginalised. And the few at the very top monopolise the power and the wealth of the country, the level of corruption in Yemen is … definitely worse than Egypt and maybe as bad as Libya.
In terms of the social indicators, the Yemeni society is very backward. Only 35 per cent of the population is in major cities; the rest are rural. The level of education, believe it or not, in terms of literacy, Yemen and Egypt are almost equal. But in terms of education at large, Yemen falls behind. The number of qualified confident university graduates is much smaller in Yemen than it is in Egypt.
The middle class is very small in Yemen. That is a serious constraint on social mobilisation. The middle class has been basically disseminated by the ruling elite because they saw it as a potential political competitor so they made every effort to ensure the middle class disappears, by impoverishing the people, making them easier to control.
