The Welfare of Syrian Refugees

The Syrian refugee crisis, which began in 2011, is one of the most pressing disasters
in the world today, with its effects reverberating around the globe. By the end of
2015, more than 7.6 million of the country’s people had been internally displaced
and 4.3 million were registered refugees. The number of internally displaced persons
and refugees amounts to about half of Syria’s precrisis population. Thousands have
died while trying to reach safety.

Due to the large humanitarian response, there is now a wealth of available
information on refugees’ income and expenses, food and nutrition, health, education,
employment, vulnerability, housing, and other measures of well-being. These data
have been little explored, as humanitarian organizations face daily challenges that
make the full use of existing data very difficult.

The Welfare of Syrian Refugees: Evidence from Jordan and Lebanon aims to assess
the poverty and vulnerability of these refugees and evaluate existing and alternative
policies designed to help them. The authors find that current policies, including cash
transfers and food vouchers, are effective in reducing poverty, but fail to lead to—
nor are they designed to yield—economic inclusion and self-reliance. Those goals
would require a different humanitarian and development paradigm, one that focuses
on growth policies for areas affected by refugees where the target population has a
mix of refugees and hosting populations.

This volume is the result of the first comprehensive collaboration between the World
Bank Group and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and
aims to better understand and ultimately improve the well-being of Syrian refugees
living in Jordan and Lebanon.