This assessment provides a pre-earthquake snapshot of household livelihoods in the regions most affected by Myanmar’s March 2025 earthquake, offering a baseline for recovery planning. It highlights the economic vulnerabilities and sector-specific challenges already present before the disaster, which will shape recovery prospects and needs.
Key Highlights
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Income-based poverty was widespread, affecting 69 percent of households, with wage laborers most affected due to insecure and low-paying work.
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Rural areas like Shan and Sagaing depended heavily on farming and livestock, while urban regions like Mandalay and Nay Pyi Taw relied more on salaried jobs and small businesses.
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Households faced high input costs, reduced demand, unstable electricity, and limited formal assistance; many relied on informal support networks.
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Recovery efforts should prioritize access to inputs, small loans, and short-term employment through cash-for-work programs, tailored to the diverse local contexts.
On March 28, 2025, a 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck central Myanmar, causing extensive destruction and compounding an already fragile humanitarian situation driven by conflict, economic instability, and prior natural disasters. This assessment examines pre-earthquake livelihood conditions across the most severely affected areas—Mandalay, Sagaing, Bago, Nay Pyi Taw, and Shan State—to provide a baseline for recovery planning focused on restoring economic resilience.
Prior to the earthquake, household livelihoods varied significantly across the earthquake hit regions. Farming and livestock production dominated in Shan and Sagaing, where the earthquake primarily affected rural areas, whereas non-farm businesses and salaried employment were more common in Mandalay and Nay Pyi Taw, where the earthquake impacted predominately urban areas. Wage labor, both farm and non-farm, supported a significant share of households, but was associated with the highest rates of income-based poverty, reflecting the insecurity of casual and seasonal employment. Income-based poverty was widespread, affecting 69 percent of households in earthquake-affected areas.
Challenges were already evident across key sectors. Farmers faced high input costs, difficulties marketing crops, and limited access to mechanization. Non-farm businesses reported rising raw material and transportation costs, as well as reduced customer demand. Wage and salaried workers faced reduced working hours, lower wages, and mobility constraints. Access to services was uneven: while medical care was generally available, electricity access was highly unstable, with households averaging 10 hours of outages per day. Formal assistance from NGOs and INGOs reached relatively few households, making remittances and informal support from family and friends critical sources of resilience. Ownership of monetizable assets such as gold, savings, motorbikes, and land varied widely, which will influence how households' are able to cope and recover.
Based on these findings, the assessment identifies several priority actions to support recovery: ensuring timely access to agricultural inputs, facilitating small loans through microfinance institutions to support farmers and small businesses, and establishing cash-for-work programs to provide immediate income opportunities through debris removal, repairs, and agricultural labor. Tailoring recovery support to the distinct conditions across affected regions will be essential to stabilize incomes, restore economic activities, and strengthen household resilience to future shocks.