Rethinking the Lebanese economic miracle - The Extreme Concentration of Income and Wealth in Lebanon, 2005-2014

Sep 19, 2026

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I combine household surveys, national accounts, and unique personal income tax records to estimate Lebanon’s national income distribution over 2005–2014. Results show extreme concentration: the top 1% and 10% of adults receive about 25% and 55% of national income on average. These findings challenge narratives that inequality is moderate in the Middle East and reinforce evidence that Lebanon’s sectarian governance enabled long-term rent extraction by the ruling elite at the expense of most citizens.

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Assouad, Lydia (2023) Rethinking the Lebanese economic miracle: the extreme concentration of income and wealth in Lebanon, 2005–2014 . Journal of Development Economics, 161, [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2022.103003](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2022.103003) [https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/117680/](https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/117680/) Version: Accepted Version Licence: Creative Commons: Attribution-NoncommercialNo Derivative Works 4.0 This document is the author’s accepted version of the journal article. There may be differences between this version and the published version. Items deposited in LSE Research Online are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved unless indicated otherwise. They may be downloaded and/or printed for private study, or other acts as permitted by national copyright laws. LSE Research Online is the repository for research produced by the London School of Economics and Political Science. For more information, please refer to our Policies page or contact [lseresearchonline@lse.ac.uk](lseresearchonline@lse.ac.uk) Rethinking the Lebanese Economic Miracle: The Extreme Concentration of Income and Wealth in Lebanon, 2005-2014 Lydia Assouad * September, 2022 Abstract I combine household surveys, national accounts and unique personal income tax records to produce the ﬁrst estimates of the national income distribution in an Arab country, Lebanon. I ﬁnd that income is extremely concentrated over the 2005-2014 period: The top 1 and 10 percent of the adult population received almost 25 and 55 percent of national income on average, placing Lebanon among the countries with the highest levels of income inequality in the world. These results challenge a long lasting narrative according to which inequality levels are not that high in the Middle East. They also conﬁrm results from a large literature that emphasizeshow the Lebanese sectarian-based mode of governance has allowed the ruling elite to extract large rents for decades and at the expense of the majority of citizens. JEL-Codes: D31, D63, E01, I32, P46, O15, O53 . Keywords: Inequality, Lebanon, National Income Distribution, Rent-Seeking. ∗ Paris School of Economics, [lydia.assouad@psemail.eu](lydia.assouad@psemail.eu. I am very)[. I am very](lydia.assouad@psemail.eu. I am very) thankful to Facundo Alvaredo, Rabah Arezki, Thomas Blanchet, Jeanne Bomare, Melani Cammett, Jad Chaaban, Ishac Diwan, Francisco Ferreira, Julian Langer, Charbel Nahas, Christiana Parreira, Bluebery Planterose, Thomas Piketty, Nisreen Salti, Fawwaz Traboulsi, Clementine Van Eﬀenterre, Daniel Waldenström and Gabriel Zucmanas well as seminar participants at the American University of Beirut, Saint-Joseph University of Beirut, the Paris School of Economics, the Carnegie Middle East Center and the World Bank for very helpful discussions and comments. I am very grateful to Mireille Mouawad, Eric Le Borgne and Georges Corm for helping me access the ﬁscal data. An earlier version of this study was distributed under the title" Top incomes and Personal Taxation in Lebanon: An exploration of individual tax records 2005-2012 " . This paper was ﬁrst drafted during my visit at the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment and beneﬁtted from fundings from the Center for Equitable Growth at UC Berkeley. 1 Introduction How unequal are Arab countries? In the last decades, the Middle East has been characterized by an extreme predominance of violence, a rise of armed non-state actors anda consolidation of authoritarianism. In this context, it is important for policy makers and scholars alike to understand whether this extreme political instability is linked to the underlying distribution of economic resources and power. The popular uprisings that recently shook the region-from the 2011 "Arab Spring" to the 2019 protests-suggest that economic inequality might indeed be quite large, as more social justice was among the main de

FAQs

What data sources are used to estimate Lebanon’s income distribution?

The study combines household surveys, national accounts, and unique personal income tax records to produce estimates for the 2005–2014 period.

How concentrated is income in Lebanon between 2005 and 2014?

Income is extremely concentrated: the top 1% and top 10% of adults receive about 25% and 55% of national income on average.

How does the paper relate its results to the governance structure in Lebanon?

It argues that Lebanon’s sectarian-based governance allowed the ruling elite to extract large rents for decades, harming most citizens.

Sep 19, 2026

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