Has Wealth Made Qatar Happy?

 

Oil and gas have made Qatar the richest country in the world - rich enough to be ready, apparently, to spend $200bn (£120bn) on stadiums and infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup. But has virtually limitless wealth brought the country happiness?


Qatar's government puts a positive spin on the pace of change.

Richest countries (GDP per capita)

• Qatar ($102,000)
• Lichtenstein ($89,000)
• Bermuda ($86,000)
• Macau ($82,000)
• Luxembourg ($78,000)

From desperate poverty less than a century ago, this, after all, has become the richest nation in the world, with an average per-capita income topping $100,000 (£60,000).

What's less well understood is the impact of such rapid change on Qatari society itself.

You can feel the pressure in Doha. The city is a building site, with whole districts either under construction or being demolished for redevelopment. Constantly snarled traffic adds hours to the working week, fuelling stress and impatience.media report that 40% of Qatari marriages now end in divorce. More than two-thirds of Qataris, adults and children, are obese. 

Qataris benefit from free education, free healthcare, job guarantees, grants for housing, even free water and electricity, but abundance has created its own problems.

"It's bewildering for students to graduate and be faced with 20 job offers," one academic at an American university campus in Qatar tells me. "People feel an overwhelming pressure to make the right decision."

In a Society where Qataris are outnumbered roughly seven-to-one by expatriates, long-term residents speak of a growing frustration among graduates that they are being fobbed off with sinecures while the most satisfying jobs go to foreigners.

The sense is deepening that, in the rush for development, something important has been lost.
Qatari family life is atomising. With children almost universally being raised by nannies brought in from the Philippines, Nepal or Indonesia, gaps of culture and outlook are opening up between the generations.

 

Qatari society is defined by class, which is often linked to race. It is desperately unequal. 

Redress the balance - by, for instance, abolishing the kafala system that condemns migrant workers to near-slavery, or by opening Qatari citizenship to expatriates - and the fear is stability will erode and cultural values be undermined.

But stability is already a shrinking asset here, and values are already shifting. 

As once-solid regional alliances with Saudi Arabia and other neighbours crumble, and corrosive apprehension spreads among Qataris about the impact of the World Cup - still eight years away - the government may yet find itself facing pressure to reform.