A disquieting fact, that motivated a renewed interest toward the understanding of the distributional features, in both the academic and policy environment, is the increase in inequality in many industrialized countries over the last decades, accompanied by a general increase of the social discontent. These issues have become even more important in the wake of the worldwide social movements generated by the 2008 financial crisis.Recent research suggests that rising inequality not only characterizes the industrialized world, but it also affects many other countries, including those generally thought to be rather egalitarian. In addition, there is growing consensus that high inequality may be among the causes of slow poverty reduction, despite rapid economic growth, especially in central and southern Africa. The social movements that characterized the 2011 Arab uprisings were also fundamental in emphasizing this issue in the context of the Arab world; many pointed to high and rising inequality as one of the factors that determined its establishment. However, such view seemed to be in contradiction with the conventional measures of income inequality, which were not high in that region. The aim of this paper is to explore perceptions of inequality and social justice in the Arab region. By performing a detailed analysis for each sub-group of the population, mainly defined according to the most relevant socio-economic characteristics, this paper also seeks to identify the determinants of such perceptions. As a results, this paper helps us to understand why we should not constrain ourselves to the mere measurement of inequality. The analysis contained in this paper is realized by making use of two surveys. The first is the Sixth World Value Survey (WVS), the most recent available survey, for 11 Arab countries, namely Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Tunisia, Yemen. The second is the Arab Barometer for 12 Arab countries, namely Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Sudan, Tunisia, Yemen. The analysis is performed looking at the whole population and at the main reference groups, defined on the base of gender, educational level and income status. Overall and country specific results are provided
