Exclusive: Guardian-YouGov poll suggests majority in nine countries across the Arab world feel inequality has increased

A majority in nine countries across the Arab world feel they are living in significantly more unequal societies today than before the Arab spring, an era of uprisings, civil wars and unsteady progress towards self-determination that commenced a decade ago, according to a Guardian-YouGov poll.

Pluralities in almost every country agreed their living conditions had deteriorated since 2010, when the self-immolation of Tunisian fruit seller Mohamed Bouazizi is credited with kicking off mass demonstrations and revolutions that spread across the region. Reverberations of that moment continued into 2019 with the overthrow of Sudan’s former dictator Omar al-Bashir and large protest movements in Lebanon, Algeria and Iraq.