The State of Qatar is a most unusual place. For starters, it is a really wealthy country. In 2007, Qatar’s oil and natural gas wealth gave it the fifth highest per capita income in the world, $67,000 (according to the US State Department’s Background Note on Qatar.) Then there’s the composition of the country’s population. In May 2008, a month or so before my most recent visit, there were about 1.45 million people in Qatar, three quarters of whom were male. The population pyramids below (from the US Census Bureau) makes this clear. They also reveals that a large share of the country’s male population is in the 20 – 50 year old age range, and that this share is projected to increase significantly...
