The social protection system in Myanmar has remained at a rudimentary level for the past decade, with policies scattered and fragmented across various government departments, and serving only a fraction of the eligible population. After the military takeover in 2021, government provision of social protection faced a complete collapse with near zero allocation to the population. In the face of the double predicament of the COVID-19 pandemic and coup, any form of anti-poverty investment should effectively target the poor based on observable and verifiable characteristics.
In this research note, researchers from the Myanmar Agriculture Policy Support Activity (MAPSA) explore some promising indicators which can be used by implementing agencies to effectively target the poor. We use data from the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey (MHWS) collected over the phone during July and August of 2022. The survey was conducted among 12,000 households in 310 townships of Myanmar. The MHWS is a nationally, urban/rural and state/region representative phone survey . The household survey questionnaire collected information on a wide variety of topics such as household composition, occupation, education, dwelling characteristics, assets, income, and agriculture.
You can view the full research note in English here.
Key Findings
- This note proposes promising indicators to effectively target the poor such as:
- Households with walls made of hemp/hay/bamboo, etc.
- Household with rudimentary electricity connection such as solar, battery, water mill or nothing.
- Household located more than 2 hours away from the nearest township center.
- Household whose primary source of income is agricultural wage work.
- Additionally, we propose some indicators for assets, land ownership and housing condition that can be combined with the key indicators for strengthening identification.
- Certain demographic groups such as households with young and school-aged children are also highly vulnerable to poverty.
- There exists some heterogeneity in poverty indicators across regions:
- Dry, Delta, and Hill regions are found to be most similar in poverty indicators with associations weak in the Coastal region where housing and assets are more important.
Recommended actions
- Adoption of some or all these indicators will increase the cost-effectiveness of safety net programs and help achieve their policy objective of supporting the poorest households.
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.
