The Central Administration of Statistics (CAS) in collaboration with the World Bank have developed the first multidimensional poverty index for Lebanon by relying on data gathered from the 2018-2019 Labor Force and Housing Living Conditions Survey that the CAS performed. The Lebanon Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) aims to redefine poverty by complementing monetary measures of poverty with non-monetary measures of deprivations. More specifically, the CAS noted that poverty is not just about an individual or household having a low income but also includes a set of factors, namely lack of clean water or electricity, poor quality of work or limited schooling. The index consists of 19 indicators spread across five dimensions: education, health, financial security/well-being, basic infrastructure and living standards. According to the report, a household is considered as deprived in each indicator if its score falls below the minimum standard determined for that indicator. In details, the education dimension revolves around households with low schooling completion rates or whose children are out of school. The health dimension centers on households without health insurance or those who cannot afford medical services. The financial security dimension tries to capture households that are having a hard time in finding work, whose members are in low quality jobs, or unable to properly help their families. The basic infrastructure dimension encompasses households with limited access to services such as transportation, health care, sanitation, water or electricity. The living standards dimension depicts households that are residing in an overcrowded habitat, have no heating sources, possess limited assets, lack access to information or view themselves as poor or very poor. The index assigns equal weight to each dimension and to each indicator within a dimension. According to the CAS, an individual or a household is considered multidimensionally poor if they are deprived of a minimum number or share of indicators. In this vein, the 2019 MPI for Lebanon revealed that 53.1% of Lebanese residents were considered multidimensionally poor as they were deprived in over 25% of the indicators. Furthermore, the report revealed that in the case of extreme poverty, the poverty rate is at 16.2% (deprived in more than 50% of the indicators). The report revealed that by summing up the five dimensions, the largest contributor to deprivation is the health dimension (30.2%), followed by financial security (25.8%), education (25.3%), living standards (12.9%), and basic infrastructure (5.7%). Delving further into details, the report stated that the governorate of Akkar (69.6%) and Bekaa (67.0%) have the highest levels of MPI and incidence of poverty. Beirut on the other hand has the highest intensity of poverty, i.e. the poor in Beirut are more likely to experience a larger deprivation than in other governorates. In the same vein, the report mentioned that the Mount Lebanon governorate hosts the largest share of MPI-poor (33.3%), trailed by the North (15.1%), the South (13.2%), Akkar (9.0%), Nabatieh (8.8%), Bekaa (7.9%), Beirut (6.7%) and Baalbek-Hermel (5.9%).

Concerning age-groups, the report noted that the highest level of multidimensional poverty was recorded in 66.8% of households with young children aged between 0 and 4. The report findings also revealed that female-headed households are likely to have higher incidences of multidimensional poverty (56.7%) than male-headed ones (52.6%). More specifically, the report mentioned that individuals residing in female-headed households fared worse than those living in male-headed households in six indicators, while they fared better in seven other indicators. The CAS also unveiled that households with higher levels of education are associated with lower levels of multinational poverty while larger households are associated with larger incidences of multidimensional poverty.