Introduction

Population ageing in the Arab region is a relatively recent phenomenon. However, propelled by rapid socioeconomic changes, various patterns of migration, modernity and advances in health, there is little doubt that this process is being compressed in several countries of the region (Sibai and Kronfol, 2007). Population ageing, with all its ramifications, is today particularly evident in Lebanon, a small middle-income country on the Eastern Mediterranean shore (total population around 3,756,000; United Nations, 2011). Adults aged 65+ currently represent 7.7 per cent of its population, the highest percentage in the region (Sibai et al, 2012), and this is projected to increase to 10.2 and 19.3 per cent by the years 2025 and 2050, respectively (Sibai et al, 2004; UN DESA, 2008). Those aged 80+ will more than quadruple during the same period (0.9 to 1.6 and 4.3 per cent, respectively).

In spite of this, the public health, social and economic implications of rapid ageing in Lebanon have not been acknowledged, either by policy-makers at the national level or by donor agencies at the global level, and are relatively underresearched (Sibai et al, 2004). The latter is compounded by the lack of a reliable database and statistical infrastructure and by the long years of political instability and turmoil in the country, from 1975 until 1991, exacerbating the incomplete registration of changes to the structure and composition of the population. The most recent census, for example, dates from 1932, when Lebanon was still under the French mandate; owing to the precarious and delicate sectarian arrangement in the body politics and because of power struggles in the country, the government has deliberately avoided conducting a comprehensive update of the 1932 census.

One of the first major contributions to describe the socioeconomic conditions of older adults in Lebanon has been derived from the data of the Population and Housing Survey (PHS) conducted by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Ministry of Social Affairs in Lebanon in 1995. The PHS was a national probability sample of around 10 per cent of the total population, covering each of the country's six governorates and 26 districts, and served as a mini-census for the country.