approach to the existing data on refugee self-reliance using 11 microdata surveys from low- and middleincome countries. Section 4 discusses the results and the potential implications of the findings. Section 5 draws key conclusions.

# 2. Review of literature on measuring self-reliance

The most widely used definition of refugee self-reliance comes from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR, 2014) which defines self-reliance as “the ability of an individual, household or community to meet essential needs and to enjoy social and economic rights in a sustainable manner and with dignity. By becoming self-reliant, refugees and displaced persons lead active and productive lives and are able to build strong social, economic and cultural ties with their host communities. Self-reliance can assist in ensuring that persons of concern are better protected by strengthening their capacity to claim their civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights” (UNHCR, 2014).

Self-Reliance has emerged as a priority outcome of refugee support in recent years. Driven by landmark agreements of the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants (2016), its accompanying Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF), and the UN Global Compact on Refugees (2018), there is more emphasis than ever on the promotion of refugee self-reliance (Betts, 2021; Easton-Calabria, 2021; UNHCR 2024b). However, the centrality of self-reliance to international refugee discourse marks more of a resurgence than an innovation, as self-reliance has been a repeated goal of assistance actors for over a century (Easton-Calabria, 2021). Since its emergence in 1920s Greece, when the League of Nations provided livelihood assistance to over 1.5 million refugees, self-reliance has been through many different incarnations, all of which have repackaged similar practices under different monikers, such as ‘selfsufficiency’, ‘self-supporting’, ‘rehabilitation’, ‘self-help’, ‘rural animation’ and ‘sustainable programming’ (Betts, 2021; Easton-Calabria, 2022; Easton-Calabria and Omata, 2018; UNHCR 2024b). Despite refugee self-reliance, in its various forms, existing for over a century, self-reliance has rarely been measured, and in the rare instances where it has, these measures have been deficient, failing to capture the central tenet of refugee self-reliance: independence from aid (Betts, 2021; Schön, 2020; Hoogeveen and Hopper, 2024).

The most cited measures of refugee self-reliance are the ‘Self-Reliance Index’ (SRI), developed by the _Refugee Self-Reliance Initiative_ who proclaim their measure to be “the first global tool to measure the progress of refugee families on their journey to self-reliance" (SRI, n.d.)., and Betts et al.’s (2018, 2020) measure of refugee self-reliance, which is used to assess how well-adapted refugee settlements are to supporting refugees. Despite representing the pre-eminent (if not only) recognized measures on refugee self-reliance, neither measure adequately accounts for independence from aid, thereby failing to capture the true notion of ‘self-reliance’. For instance, both the SRI and Betts et al. (2018, 2020) account for food security in their measures, but do so by measuring food consumption only, with no consideration given to the source of this food consumption and whether food security needs can be met independently of aid. While both measures include information on independence from aid, this information does not inform the other metrics used by the authors to calculate self-reliance, with refugees deemed to be ‘self-reliant’ in food security, public goods, health, education and other domains once a certain outcome is achieved, regardless of whether these outcomes can be achieved in the absence of external assistance.

(2024), who present their own, multi-dimensional measure of refugee self-reliance, while this paper offers a more simplified measure of self-reliance, one that is achievable given current limitations in the data. The 3