New HRW Survey Shows the Depths of Hunger, Poverty in Lebanon

By Staff, Agencies

Lebanon’s median household income is just $122 per month, a new report from Human Rights Watch said. 90% of households earn less than $377 per month and 99% earned less than $1,450 monthly.

These figures include not just income from work but also remittances and social assistance from the government or NGOs and other organizations, Lena Simet, senior economic justice researcher at Human Rights Watch and one of the report’s authors, told L’Orient Today. Average income from work is therefore even lower.

The report, based on a survey of 1,209 households conducted between November 2021 and January 2022, underlines the depths to which Lebanon has sunk amid a three-year economic crisis that the World Bank has called one of the worst globally since the mid-nineteenth century.

Comparisons over time are difficult due to the lack of high-quality data in Lebanon but the HRW report suggests incomes have dramatically fallen over the last three years. The World Bank’s only recent estimate of median income, an estimate for 2011, found a median monthly income of $465 [in 2022 dollars, i.e. after adjusting for inflation], compared to just $122 today.

65% of surveyed households said they were unable to pay for heating in the previous year. Over half said they could not afford adequate clothing, education tuition or school materials. Two in five households cannot afford medicine, medical care or health services.

For large numbers, even the most basic necessities of survival were at risk. 20% of households ran out of food the previous month because of a lack of money.