Libyan socialism primarily focused on wealth redistribution of oil-rents to general public to rapidly increase living standards and quality of life.
A limit was imposed on the rents that landlords could charge, fixing maximum rents at about one third of the pre-revolutionary level. Tripoli until then had been the most expensive city in the Middle East. Many large properties were taken over and let to the people at low rents. The vast sprawling shanty town just outside Tripoli was torn down and replaced by new workers' housing projects.``
When Qaddafi took power, the literacy rate in Libya was a miserable twenty percent. The consequence of the transfer payments lifted the rate to ninety percent by 1980[1].
“One of the poorest countries in the world in the 1950s, Libya now ranks ahead of several other oil-producing countries in terms of per capita GDP.
Universal enrollment in primary education has been achieved and the illiteracy rate is well below the regional average.
Libya has some of the lowest infant mortality rates among middle-income countries. Laws and regulations do not discriminate against women.”[2]
75% of the Libyan workforce was in the public sector[3].
Healthcare sector vastly improved. Lowest infant mortality rate in Africa[4]
- ↑ Arab spring. Libyan winter - https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781849351133
- ↑ Socialist Libya Economic Report 2006 - https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/88084230-0a04-5f7e-b0b9-8299d5c88bee
- ↑ (Libya and Qaddafi -https://archive.org/details/libyaqaddafi00laws/page/n133/mode/1up)
- ↑ (https://web.archive.org/web/20080612142954/http://www.who.int/countryfocus/cooperation_strategy/ccsbrief_lby_en.pdf)