Tables
64 and 65 above show that 25.9 percent of all Lebanese households (and
33.7 percent of individuals) live below the threshold with respect to
the housing indicators adopted in the study.
A comparison of the living conditions index with the housing index shows
that the percentage of deprived households based on the latter (25.9
percent) is lower than in the former (32.1 percent), and with respect to
the index of income-related indicators (42.8 percent). Moreover, a more
significant proportion of the population belongs to the higher category
in the housing index (47.5 percent of households, compared to 25.4
percent for the living conditions index, and 24.8 percent for the
income-related indicators index).
This disparity can be explained if account is taken, in addition to the
cultural and social factors, of the features characterizing economic and
social development in Lebanon, especially the effects of the war on the
market for housing and demographic mobility. The time horizon for
transformations to occur in housing conditions and specifications is
longer than for other aspects that express living conditions, in
particular income. This is became the housing index is related to both
the level of currently available resources and the level of accumulated
or inherited resources at the disposal of the household. Thus,
households which suffered a deterioration in their earnings during the
war were able to retain a better-quality dwelling than would have been
possible with current resources. This assessment, it should be noted,
does not cover households whose housing conditions deteriorated due to
forced displacement under the pressure of non-economic factors. In
contrast, a household whose earnings improved only recently needs a
relatively longer period to ameliorate its housing conditions, relative
to other aspects of living.
Thus, the housing index expresses, in one of its facets, the accumulated
and inherited level and pattern of living. Other available data also
support this observation, whether in terms of the high ownership rate,
which reaches 63.8 percent (plus 3.7 percent of partial ownership); or
in terms of the duration of occupancy. In this connection, it may be
noted that 27.5 percent of households occupy their dwellings through
inheritance, and that 46.8 percent of them fall within the category that
have a high living standard according to the housing index. Furthermore,
41.7 percent of households have been living in their present dwellings
since before 1985 , of which 45.8 percent fall in the category with a
high standard of living. This means that the relatively higher score
obtained by households with respect to the housing index is due, in
part, to the perpetuation of an earlier situation. whereas newly-formed
(young) households must reckon with more acute problems.
In this connection, attention should be drawn to the structural
imbalance between the supply of and demand for housing. The problem does
not reside in the lack of accommodations, as the real estate sector has
been one of the sectors which experienced real growth despite the war.
It is rather in the disparity between the specifications and prices of
houses on offer (luxury buildings by Lebanese standards), relative to
demand (more modest specifications and lower prices) which has given
rise to the phenomenon of vacancies. The number of vacant apartments in
Beirut is estimated at 13,868 or 11.9 percent of the total. The number
rises to 96,697 apartments in Mount Lebanon (20.9 percent of the total),
22,920 (12.8 percent) in Northern Lebanon, and to 17,597 (14.5 percent)
in the Bekaa .
Despite this, the housing index remains more closely correlated with the
index of income-related indicators than with the indices of the
remaining fields considered, as can be seen in the following table.
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