The protests over unemployment, food inflation and corruption in Tunisia have effectively ousted the President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali after 23 years of rule. Most remarkably the political pressure has brought with it a more democratic system, albeit with trouble along the way.
We ask: how similar are Tunisia's neighbouring countries? This is an important question as it gives a clue about whether actions in Tunisia will inspire other countries, in a similar situations, to do the same.
We look at key statistics that show how Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Syria compare to Tunisia on population, labour force, unemployment and GDP per capita.
With this very brief analysis you can see that Libya is the only country with a higher unemployment rate than Tunisia, and a similar population size. However the GDP per capita is lower than Tunisia in every country compared, except Libya where GDP per capita is running at a relatively healthy $14,000.
Other clues about uprisings come from the Transparency International corruption index, which ranks Tunisia as the 59th least corrupt country in the world, while the comparison countries are all listed as more corrupt: Morocco is ranked 85, Egypt 98, Syria 127, Algeria 105 and Libya 146.
Here is the data, how would you expand on it to compare these countries more accurately?
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