The Welfare of Syrian Refugees

Evidence from Jordan and Lebanon

Paolo Verme, Chiara Gigliarano, Christina Wieser, Kerren Hedlund, Marc Petzoldt, Marco Santacroce

• Publisher: World Bank
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781464807701
• Subtopic: Global Development Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The book focuses on the largest refugee crisis of our time: the Syrian refugee crisis. It exploits a wealth of survey and registry data on Syrian refugees living in Jordan and Lebanon to assess their poverty and vulnerability status, understand the predictors of these statuses, evaluate the performance of existing policies toward refugees, and determine the potential for alternative policies. Findings point to a complex situation. In the absence of humanitarian assistance, poverty is extremely high among refugees. Current policies including cash transfers and food vouchers are effective in reducing poverty but they remain short of providing economic inclusion and self-reliance of refugees. A shift toward economic inclusion and self-reliance would require a different humanitarian and development paradigm, one that focuses on growth policies for areas affected by refugees where the target population is constituted by refugees and hosting populations alike. This joint study by the World Bank Group and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees helps bridge the historical divide between humanitarian and development work by providing practical solutions for assisting refugees in the short, medium and long-term and to prevent the irreversible loss of social and human capital typically associated with prolonged refugee crises.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Executive Summary
• Abbreviations
• Overview
• Concepts and Definitions
• Chapter 1 A Profile of Refugees
• Chapter 2 Welfare and Poverty
• Chapter 3 Vulnerability
• Chapter 4 Policies
• Chapter 5 A Comparative Analysis across Countries and Data Sets
• Box
• Figures
• Maps
• Tables