The United Nation’s Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) recently published a report titled “Multidimensional Poverty in Lebanon 2019-2021: Painful reality and uncertain prospects”, shedding light on the high number of people living below the income poverty line despite the multitude of initiatives implemented to benefit the poor. According to the report, poverty has been increasing since 2019 as a result of the deteriorating economic activity and the broad political instability. In details, the report mentioned that the aforementioned linked factors have exposed the Lebanese exchange rate to sizeable pressures that led to the depreciation of the currency and to severe inflation thereby limiting the purchasing power of households. In addition, these shocks have led to a drop in the living standards of a large chunk of the Lebanese and non-Lebanese population, not to mention a hefty rise in income poverty. Furthermore, the report noted that the current crisis has had a detrimental & increasing effect on health care, medicines, services, education, employment, housing and assets.

According to the ESCWA, multidimensional poverty encompasses all the traditional aspects of poverty in addition to several aspects of deprivation not limited to material dimensions classified under the multidimensional poverty index. Accordingly, a household can be classified as poor if it is subject to one or more aspect of deprivation. In details, the multidimensional poverty index encompasses six dimensions and twenty indicators. The dimensions are as follows: Education (14% of the overall value of the index), Health (30% of the overall value of the index), Public Utilities (21% of the overall value of the index), Housing (4% of the overall value of the index), Assets & Property (13% of the overall value of the index), and Employment & Income (18% of the overall value of the index). In figures, the report noted that the multidimensional poverty rate in Lebanon rose from 42% in 2019 to 82% of the total population in 2021, with circa 4 million individuals living under the multidimensional poverty threshold. In addition, said individuals represent around 1 million households including 77% (or around 745,000) of Lebanese-national households. Furthermore, the report also classified households under extreme multidimensional poverty if they are deprived from two or more aspects of deprivation. More specifically, circa 40% of the poor population was considered extremely poor, the equivalent of 34% of the total population (or 1,650,000 individuals representing 400,000 households).

From another perspective, the report stated that the failure to adopt the appropriate measures & policies required to reduce multidimensional poverty in Lebanon has had harsh consequences on the middle class over the last two years. In this respect, the report commented that the cooperation required between all tranches of the Lebanese society, the international community’s support and a proper political environment could limit these consequences.

Finally, the ESCWA has provided the following short and medium-term policy responses:

-       Access to healthcare and medications:

• Establish a national solidarity Fund that acts as an immediate response in order to reduce the suffering of the Lebanese people, the humanitarian crisis and poverty in the short term
• Develop effective social protection plans that respond more to the needs of the poor, especially the extremely poor population
• Strengthen & extend social protection systems to unemployed individuals and those who have recently lost their jobs as a result of the economic crisis
• Support domestically made medicines to help the poor purchase them

-       Electricity:

• Develop a plan to increase electricity capacity, while working on modernizing transmission and distribution networks and restructuring tariffs in order to reflect the real cost of production with the objective of ensuring that electricity reaches all Lebanese, especially the vulnerable
• In the longer term, support renewable energy (such as solar, wind, bioenergy and hydropower) and invest in sustainable energy farms for industrial and public uses

-       Employment:

• Develop a national rescue plan to advance the private sector and support micro, small & medium enterprises so as to create new jobs & reduce unemployment