Poverty in Lebanon

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]