The Syrian Refugee Life Study : First Glance

This paper presents descriptive statistics from the first wave of the Syrian Refugee LifeStudy (S-RLS), which was launched in 2020. S-RLS is a longitudinal study that tracks a representative sample of2,500 registered Syrian refugee households in Jordan. It collects comprehensive data on socio-demographic variablesas well as information on health and well-being, preferences, social capital, attitudes, and safety and crimeperceptions. This study uses these novel data to document the socio-demographic characteristics of Syrian refugees inJordan, and compare them to those of the representative Jordanian and non-Jordanian populations interviewed in the2016 Jordan Labor Market Panel Survey. The findings point to lags in basic service access, housing quality, andeducational attainment for the Syrian refugee population, relative to the non-refugee population. The impacts of thepandemic may serve to partially explain these documented disparities. The data also illustrate that most Syrianrefugees have not recovered economically from the shock of COVID-19 and that this population has larger genderdisparities in terms of income, employment, prevalence of child marriage, and gender attitudes than their non-refugeecounterparts. Finally, mental health problems are common for Syrian refugees in 2020, with depression indicated amongover 61 percent of the population.