The following lesson activities are based on the article “Young Saudis See Cushy Jobs Vanish Along With Nation’s Oil Wealth.”
Before Reading
What do you know about Saudi Arabia? What do you imagine life there to be like? Why?
For decades, Saudi Arabia’s immense oil wealth has given its people lavish benefits, including free education and medical care, generous energy subsidies and well-paid (and often undemanding) government jobs.
But now oil prices have dropped from more than $100 a barrel in June 2014 to below $30.
What do you think that might mean for life in a country where 90 percent of government revenues are from oil?
After Reading
Read the entire article and answer the questions, supporting your responses by citing evidence from the text.
1. What has Saudi Arabia’s vast oil wealth meant to the kingdom for the last several decades? What benefits did it bring?
2. Why does the old math no longer work? How is the shift already being seen in the economy there?
3. How much of the Saudi population is under 30? What does the oil shock mean to these younger Saudis?
4. How much of Saudi government revenues are from oil? What percentage of working Saudis are employed by the government? Considering all these numbers — the population under 30, the revenues from oil and the percentage of Saudis employed by the government — why might economists consider the Saudi economy “poorly structured”?
5. How are generational differences in Saudi Arabia playing out right now?
6. Why is it a time of chaos in the Middle East and of generational change in the royal family?
Going Further
This article was chosen by our Student Council member Logan Casey. He suggests these questions:
To what extent are our attitudes and traits formed by our historical and geographic location? How different do you think young Saudis are from young people in other parts of the world? How different are previous generations from your own, and how much of that has to do with what was happening in their nation and the world at the time?
Can changing economic and social circumstances put a stamp on an entire generation? For example, how much did the Great Recession shape the attitudes of the millennial generation of Americans?
Related
2011 News Q’s | Saudi Women Win the Vote