To understand the effects of COVID-19, the political crisis, and other shocks on Myanmar’s agricultural wage laborers (those workers relying on casual labor in agriculture), Researchers from the Myanmar Agriculture Policy Support Activity (MAPSA) rely on data from three rounds of the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey and two rounds of the Myanmar Agricultural Performance Survey, fielded in 2021 and 2022. This blog post highlights results and analysis on the importance of agricultural wage laborers in Myanmar, their wage evolution over the last two years, and asses the level and changes in a range of welfare indicators.
You can view the full research note in English here.
Key findings
- The number of people making a living from agricultural wages is very important in Myanmar: 16 percent of rural households – 1.3 million households – considered agricultural wages their most important source of income in Quarter 3 of 2022.
- Agricultural wages increased by 12 percent in nominal terms between the monsoon of 2021 and 2022. However, prices of goods and services increased more rapidly over this period. Prices of a typical food basket increased by 58 percent between July 2021 and August 2022 while the price of rice – the basic staple – increased by 43 percent.
- To understand changes in ‘real’ wages, we use three alternative measures of inflation as ‘deflators’. Real agricultural wages declined over the last year by:
1. 29 percent, using a food price index as a deflator.
2. 22 percent, measured in kilograms of rice (from 9.3 kgs to 7.3 kgs for men and from 7.3 kgs to 5.7 kgs for women).
3. 39 percent, measured in USD (from 3.9 USD to 2.4 USD/day for men and from 3.0 to 1.8 USD/day for women). - The agricultural wage gap between men and women is increasing: It was 21 percent during the monsoon of 2020 but had widened to 28 percent during the monsoon of 2022.
- Welfare indicators are substantially worse for agricultural wage laborers compared to the rest of the rural population. As incomes worsened for agricultural wage laborers, their welfare indicators (food security and asset poverty rates) also worsened.
Looking forward
- Given their precarious situation, agricultural wage laborers would benefit from targeted assistance.
- In the short-term, an expansion of cash-for-work programs would allow them to assure more reliable incomes. If cash-for-work included work on the farm, it would also address the shortage of agricultural labor in many rural areas, an important issue reported by a substantial share of crop farmers.
- In the longer-term, there is a need to reform policies to improve land access for agricultural laborers, who are often landless.
This blog post highlights one of the many recent surveys and research notes that MAPSA has conducted to assess the emerging constraints that key agricultural actors face and to mitigate the possible impacts of COVID-19 and recent disruptions on rural livelihoods and food security. Additional blog posts are available highlighting MAPSA’s research on the impact of disruptions on key actors in Myanmar’s agri-food system. Surveys are ongoing, and findings and recommendations will be periodically updated.
