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

OBJECTIVE: Humanitarian aid, including food aid, has increasingly shifted towards the 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 1572).

RESULTS: While 92 % of Syrian households with youth received cash transfers from a UN 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.