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Accepted manuscript

Receipt of humanitarian cash transfers, household food insecurity and the subjective wellbeing of Syrian refugee youth in Jordan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2025

Maia Sieverding*
Affiliation:
American University of Beirut, Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Health Promotion and Community Health, Riad El Solh 1107 2020, Beirut, Lebanon
Zeina Jamaluddine
Affiliation:
Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom
*
*Corresponding author: [email protected]
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Abstract

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Objective:

Humanitarian aid, including food aid, has increasingly shifted towards provision of cash assistance over in-kind benefits. This paper examines whether food security mediates the relationship between receipt of humanitarian cash transfers and subjective wellbeing among Syrian refugee youth in Jordan.

Design:

Secondary analysis of the 2020-21 Survey of Young People in Jordan, which is nationally representative of Syrian youth aged 16-30. We employ stepwise model building and structural equation models.

Setting:

Jordan.

Participants:

Syrian refugee youth aged 16-30 (n = 1,572).

Results:

While 92% of Syrian households with youth received cash transfers from a United Nations agency, 78% of households were food insecure using the Food Insecurity Experience Scale. Fifty-one percent of youth suffered from poor wellbeing using the WHO-5 subjective wellbeing scale. Household food insecurity was associated with poorer youth wellbeing. Receiving larger cash transfer amounts was associated with better wellbeing among Syrian youth in unadjusted models. The relationship between receipt of cash transfers and youth wellbeing was not mediated by food security.

Conclusion:

We do not find support for the hypothesis that food security is a mediator of the association between cash transfers and subjective wellbeing for this population.

Type
Research Paper
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Nutrition Society