A Multi-Dimensional Measure of Well-being among Youth: The Case of Palestinian Refugee Youth in Lebanon

Abstract

This paper aims to develop a youth well-being index that builds on the Human Development Index and the human development approach of Amartya Sen and focuses on the well-being of young Palestinian refugees from Lebanon (PRL) and Palestinian refugees from Syria living in Lebanon (PRS). The Youth Well-being Index (YWBI) expands existing well-being measurements to cover non-nationals for the first time with a focus on young people in an attempt to develop more inclusive national and international strategies and policies. The YWBI was developed to address the specificities of refugee youth to allow international humanitarian and development agencies to compare aspects of refugee well-being across different fields and comparable countries. Using micro data from the 2015 socio-economic survey of Palestinian refugees conducted in Lebanon, the newly devised index measures well-being along various dimensions including education, health, housing, employment and access to information. The index results across sub-regions and refugee groups suggest that a richer and more holistic measure of the human development of refugee youth could be used for a more efficient and equitable targeting of scarce assistance funds.