Investigating resilience of refugee households in Jordan

Abstract

As of 2024, Jordan hosts over 1.3 million refugees—one of the highest refugee-to-host population ratios globally—posing significant challenges for sustaining refugee household livelihoods. To inform effective support strategies, this study quantifies household resilience using quarterly UNHCR data from 2022. We conceptualize resilience as the ability to maintain a minimum, normatively defined level of well-being when exposed to potential stressors. We focus on two core welfare indicators (real per-capita income and expenditure) and extend existing approaches by estimating the joint conditional probability that both indicators remain above defined normative thresholds. We further examine how resilience relates to dependence on unconditional cash assistance using household panel data with fixed effects, a framework designed to account for unobserved heterogeneity and mitigate targeting bias. Results show that: (i) resilience is higher in wealthier and less densely populated Governorates; (ii) average resilience declined across the four quarters of year 2022; (iii) lower resilience is observed among Syrian households and those residing outside Amman; and (iv) assistance displays a robust contemporaneous positive association with resilience, especially among more dependent and vulnerable households. Although primarily descriptive, these patterns offer indicative insights for refining targeting strategies and designing resilience-oriented social protection programs in protracted displacement settings.