Lebanon has had very uneven population growth over the past 50 years, and it's currently growing at 1% per year. Its urbanization rate is rapidly growing and expected to reach 86% in 2020, at which point its urban population will reach 4.1 million, with a total population pushing 6 million in the next decade.
Lebanon Population Growth
There have been many migration waves in the country, as more than 1.5 million people emigrated from Lebanon between 1975 and 2011. Lebanon also hosts close to 1 million refugees and asylum seekers, most notably those from Palestine, Iraq and Syria. It's estimated that there are over 600,000 Syrian refugees (with recent sources now estimating 1 million refugees) in Lebanon escaping violence in their own country.
Lebanon Population Projections
The political climate in Lebanon has caused the growth rate in Lebanon to fluctuate significantly, and that is not expected to change any time soon. Current projections are a bit all over the board, expecting the population to begin declining around 2025, before beginning to grow again around 2040. Over this time period, these predictions say that the population of Lebanon will be close to 6,018,795 by 2020, 5,368,598 by 2030, 5,392,419 by 2040 and 5,411,830 by 2050.