Chapter 9: Lebanon: Sharply Increased Poverty for Nationals and Refugees 235
macroeconomic data, which necessarily ignores the differences across the distribution. Though less likely given the macroeconomic trends of the economy, any shifts in households’ employment and sources of livelihood cannot be captured without frequent data that monitor the evolution of the crises. Finally, despite the SRHCS 2015/16 being useful in conducting this analysis, the absence of a recent official household budget survey, on the basis of which the consumption distribution can be calibrated and accurately capture the consumption distribution of refugees, is a serious limitation. As such, the results of this analysis are treated as indicative of the expected losses in welfare as a result of changes in the country’s macroeconomic conditions, but these results do not necessarily reflect measured poverty.
Large Poverty Setbacks For a country with an already high level of poverty for both the host and the refugee communities, what kind of a setback might occur as a result of the pandemic? The results show that there will be a sharp rise in poverty levels for both the Lebanese population and the Syrian refugees (figure 9.6). In addition, there will be a large number of new poor (those who were not poor in the first quarter of 2020 but became poor after) for both groups, for a combined total of about 2.3 million individuals by end-2021.4 Using the international poverty line, the analysis shows the following: • For the Lebanese population, the rise is estimated at about 13 percentage points from the 2019 baseline by end-2020, and 28 points by end2021, meaning that the number of poor Lebanese is expected to increase by about 1.5 million by then. • For Syrian refugees, the rise is estimated at about 39 percentage points from the 2019 baseline by end-2020, and 52 points by end-2021, meaning that the number of poor refugees is expected to increase by about 780,000 by then. Note that the baseline for this group is 8 points higher than that of the Lebanese. The poverty trend is much the same if the national poverty line is used: • For the Lebanese population, the rise is estimated at about 33 percentage points from the 2019 baseline by end-2020, and 46 points by end2021, meaning that the number of poor Lebanese is expected to increase by about 2.5 million by then.
