Syrian refugees in Lebanon: a spatial study

ABSTRACT

Almost seven years of catastrophic conflict and unrest in Syria have resulted in a colossal flow of the displaced population. According to The United Nation Refugee Agency (UNHCR), by the end of 2016, there were over one million registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon. This means compared to any other host country, Lebanon has the highest rate of refugee per local population. In this paper, we focus on refugees’ placement and residence, which have shown an uneven distribution among different regions of Lebanon. Maps generated by the available data show that districts with high refugee population rates are surrounded by districts with low population rates. Our results indicate that among other variables, access to credit is the most critical variable for explaining this spatial pattern.

KEYWORDS:

• Syria
• refugee
• Lebanon
• spatial econometrics

JEL CODES:

• C31
• O53
• R23

Acknowledgments

We thank the Editor and anonymous referee for their constructive feedback. Also, we are thankful to our research assistant, Reem Zaiour, for invaluable help.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ We also used other proxies such as the percentage of withdrawn children from school, and the number of meals that refugee children eat per day; results were qualitatively similar.