MDG and Poverty Map-2011

MDG and Poverty Map-2011

July 26, 2013

Harold Coulombe

Gereltuya Altankhuyag

This report documents the construction and presents the main results of a poverty map of Mongolia based on the 2010 Population and housing Census and the 2011 houshold Socio-economic Survey. Monetary and non-monetary poverty indicators are presented at four different administrative levels: region, aimag, soum and district. The non-monetary poverty indicators – closely related to the Millennium Development Goals were easily calculated directly from the Census databases. However, monetary poverty indicators are more challenging to compute as no income or expenditure information is collected by the Census.

Based on a statistical methodology combining survey and census datasets, poverty headcount and other monetary poverty indicators have been estimated at local levels. Two main findings stand out from the analysis of the results. First, the results show that for most indicators there is a relatively high level of heterogeneity across aimag, soum and district. Having variation in level of poverty (monetary or not) raise the possibility of having more  efficient geographical targeting. And second, we found that the correlation between the different indicators is quite low in most cases. In such circumstances, policy makers would need to have indicators specific to different projects or programmes. A one size-fit-all indicator would not yield efficient outcome for any interventions.