Surprisingly, most writers are taking a static view, looking at snapshot of what nations look like today to figure out how much they'll revolt tomorrow. If you ask James Davies, however, he might tell you that it doesn't matter so much what a country looks like today - what counts is how today compares to yesterday or, more accurately, last year.
Davies' J Curve theory of revolution argues that people don't revolt when their lives suck. People with poor living standards who are also politically oppressed can tolerate their conditions for long periods of time. If, however, a population sees their fortunes rise and they begin to have higher expectations for their economic and political future but then those fortunes take a downturn - that's when you have a recipe for revolution.
If you take a glimpse at the nations that lead the revolutionary wave, Egypt and Tunisia both saw steep economic reversals in the past couple of years. Others that picked up the protest bug, including Algeria, Bahrain and Syria , either saw their previous rise in fortune either stagnate or backtrack. (The later nations to jump in, Libya and Jordan, don't fit the mold - but that may matter less if you consider that the regional revolutionary fever had already taken hold.)
It's true that the entire world saw its income per person drop after 2008. And obviously the entire world is not experiencing rebellion. Davies' theory does a better job of explaining the when of revolutions than pinpointing the why. Still, the two are hard to separate out and, if in particular when you look at poor undemocratic African nations which saw little economic growth in the past decade, Davies' theory does tell us why not all poor oppressed people are in revolt.
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