3 Income and poverty A study of income and wealth in Jerash camp paints a stark picture of poverty compared to other Palestinian camps in Jordan. Ex-Gazans in other camps are consistently somewhat poorer than other Palestinian refugees, however this gap is slight when compared to the difference between ex-Gaza residents in Jerash and all other camp refugees. Several measures are used here to explore the economic standing of ex-Gazans residing in Jerash camp. Whilst household income forms a key part of the analysis, it is supplemented by asset-based measures of wealth, which offer a clearer picture of households’ longer term economic situation, and are less vulnerable to measurement error than selfreported income. Furthermore, we examine the relative distribution of households across various poverty lines and consider how households classify their own economic standing. Income level Annual household income was calculated as the sum of a detailed list of 38 possible income sources in order to obtain the most accurate possible estimates, although such an approach still faces problems of recall error and a tendency of households to underestimate their income 50. Looking firstly at reported annual household income (Figure 3), we see that there is a marked difference in the distribution of grouped household income between ex-Gazans in Jerash and the other two groups of Palestinian refugees. This difference, particularly between the two groups of ex-Gazans, manifests itself primarily among the poorer sections of society, with 43% of Jerash camp households earning 2,000 JD or less annually compared to only 27% of ex-Gazans in other camps and 25% of other Palestinian refugees. There is some convergence between ex-Gazans in Jerash and exGazans in other camps at the upper end of the income distribution, with 18% of ex-Gazans in Jerash reporting a household income above 4,000 JD compared to 20% of ex-Gazans outside Jerash, while a higher proportion of other Palestinian refugees fall into the two upper income groups (25%). 50 See Tiltnes and Zhang (2013) for a more detailed account of the measures used. ‘Just getting by’ Ex-Gazans in Jerash and other refugee camps in Jordan 33