Poverty in Lebanon refers to a variety of situations. First, it refers to individuals and households who live below the poverty threshold, set as a money-metric measurement. This approach is the most basic and universal measure of poverty. However, research and surveys in Lebanon allowed for the emergence of a more complex concept: multidimensional poverty. Multidimensional poverty takes into account aspects of deprivation that may not relate to financial constraints: Residents in Lebanon may be deprived of health care, medicine, services, or education even when they are not materially poor. [1]
Lebanon used to be considered a middle income country before the 2019 banking and economic crisis but, even at the time, inequalities were among the highest in the world [2] [3] and 28% of the population lived below the poverty line, according to a study carried out by the Central Administration of Statistics and the World Bank in 2011. [4] In 2021, as the country experienced a severe economic crisis, [5] the United Nations estimated than more than eighty-two percent of the population lived in multidimensional poverty. [6]
According to Fawwaz Traboulsi, Lebanon has always dealt with poverty as an external and foreign element of Lebanon's society. Back when Greater Lebanon was established, he argues that poor were pictured as coming from "the annexes and regions added to Mount Lebanon and the coast to form Greater Lebanon." [7] This impacted policy making very strongly as poverty became a topic outside of society's concern [7] and in a sense became apolitical.
According to Lama Karame, poverty and welfare in Lebanon thus became the preserve of notables and religious institutions. [7] Until today, poverty in Lebanon is mostly dealt with from the angle of charity and donation and not from the perspective of citizens' rights and state obligations.
During the six years of Fouad Chehab's presidency, Lebanon developed the first national plan to provide social welfare and tackle poverty. He was the first to adopt the slogan of "balanced development": [8] He aimed at ensuring that Lebanon's most deprived regions also benefit from the economic boom the country witnesses. In 1959, Chehab established the Department of Social Welfare to deal with poverty, following the 1958 war. But according to Karame, Chehab ran into obstacles with existing, sectarian civil institutions, that competed in the same field. [7] As a result, Chehab compromised: The Department of Social Welfare mostly implemented its policies through these private bodies and funded their operations, rather than deploy a purely public policy.
The period however witnessed a real improvement of living conditions among Lebanese residents. In 1959, Chehab commissioned the IRFED (Institut de Recherches et de Formation en vue de Développement) to organize a nation-wide study. It aimed at helping the Ministry of the Plan identify, among others, the social and economic needs of the population. The study is completed in 1963 and the Ministry of the Plan never built on it to inform its master plan for the development of Lebanon. [9] However, it helped the Ministry of the Plan adopt a series of programs that actually bore fruits. By 1974, Lebanon had paved the roads to all villages, brought potable water to 94% of Lebanese and electricity from the grid to 99%. [9] [8]
According to Karame, the Lebanese civil war promoted the same logic of the civil sector at the expense of the state. [7] Each party to the conflict developed its own charity structure to support its population following an approach based on clientelism.
In 1977, the use of the Ministry of the Plan is debated among politicians as it failed to implement any plan thus far. [9] The same year, the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development (AFESD) wanted to support Lebanon in its reconstruction effort. But it requested a unique interlocutor to operate on the ground. Hence a decree law (5/1977) replaced the Ministry of the Plan with the Council for Development and Reconstruction (CDR) which became the main vehicle for international aid money.
Lebanon's official statistics are extremely scarce: the last, country-wide, population census was performed in 1932. [10] As a result, official figures on poverty are limited.
The central administration of statistics (CAS), together with the World Bank have nonetheless worked on measuring poverty using several proxies. In 2004 and again in 2011-2012, CAS and the World Bank performed household budget surveys to estimate the level of deprivation among Lebanese families. These surveys are proxies and the solidity of their results have been questioned by the very team who performed them. [11]
The 2011-2012 household budget survey estimated that 27% of the total population was leaving below the poverty line, set at £L4,729,000 per person per year (US$3,137 at the official exchange rate at the time).
The economy of Lebanon has been experiencing a large-scale multi-dimensional crisis since 2019, including a banking collapse, a liquidity crisis and a sovereign default. It is classified as a developing, lower-middle-income economy. The nominal GDP was estimated at $19 billion in 2020, with a per capita GDP amounting to $2,500. In 2018 government spending amounted to $15.9 billion, or 23% of GDP.
The poverty threshold, poverty limit, poverty line, or breadline is the minimum level of income deemed adequate in a particular country. The poverty line is usually calculated by estimating the total cost of one year's worth of necessities for the average adult. The cost of housing, such as the rent for an apartment, usually makes up the largest proportion of this estimate, so economists track the real estate market and other housing cost indicators as a major influence on the poverty line. Individual factors are often used to account for various circumstances, such as whether one is a parent, elderly, a child, married, etc. The poverty threshold may be adjusted annually. In practice, like the definition of poverty, the official or common understanding of the poverty line is significantly higher in developed countries than in developing countries.
Welfare, or commonly social welfare, is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifically to social insurance programs which provide support only to those who have previously contributed, as opposed to social assistance programs which provide support on the basis of need alone. The International Labour Organization defines social security as covering support for those in old age, support for the maintenance of children, medical treatment, parental and sick leave, unemployment and disability benefits, and support for sufferers of occupational injury.
Welfare reforms are changes in the operation of a given welfare system, with the goals of reducing the number of individuals dependent on government assistance, keeping the welfare systems affordable, and assisting recipients to become self-sufficient. Classical liberals, libertarians, and conservatives generally argue that welfare and other tax-funded services reduce incentives to work, exacerbate the free-rider problem, and intensify poverty. On the other hand, socialists generally criticize welfare reform because it usually minimizes the public safety net and strengthens the capitalist economic system. Welfare reform is constantly debated because of the varying opinions on the government's determined balance of providing guaranteed welfare benefits and promoting self-sufficiency.
Poverty in Australia deals with the incidence of relative poverty in Australia and its measurement. Relative income poverty is measured as a percentage of the population that earns less in comparison to the median wage of the working population.
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Bolsa Família is the current social welfare program of the Government of Brazil, part of the Fome Zero network of federal assistance programs. Bolsa Família provided financial aid to poor Brazilian families. In order to be eligible, families had to ensure that children attend school and get vaccinated. If they exceeded the total of permitted school absences, they were dropped from the program and their funds were suspended. The program attempted to both reduce short-term poverty by direct cash transfers and fight long-term poverty by increasing human capital among the poor through conditional cash transfers. It also worked to give free education to children who couldn't afford to go to school, to show the importance of education. In 2008, The Economist described Bolsa Família as an "anti-poverty scheme invented in Latin America [which] is winning converts worldwide." The program was a centerpiece of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's social policy and is reputed to have played a role in his victory in the general election of 2006. Bolsa Família was the largest conditional cash transfer program in the world, though the Mexican Oportunidades was the first nationwide program of this kind.
Poverty is measured in different ways by different bodies, both governmental and nongovernmental. Measurements can be absolute, which references a single standard, or relative, which is dependent on context. Poverty is widely understood to be multidimensional, comprising social, natural and economic factors situated within wider socio-political processes. The capabilities approach argues that capturing the perceptions of poor people is fundamental to understanding poverty.
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