MONGOLIA’S ECONOMY PROJECTED TO GROW BY 2.1 PERCENT IN 2022

The National Statistics Office (NSO) of Mongolia and the World Bank announced December 30, 2021 their joint official poverty rate estimation for 2020. The two organizations have collaborated on poverty measurement based on household consumption surveys since 2002.

According to the 2020 Household Socio-Economic Survey (HSES), the national official poverty rate in 2020 was 27.8 percent [1], 0.6 percentage points lower than in 2018. This translates to about 903.4 thousand people of Mongolia living in poverty in 2020.

Compared to 2018, the urban poverty rate dropped by 0.7 percentage points to 26.5 percent, while the rural poverty rate fell by 0.3 percentage points to 30.5 percent. Among the poor, 64 percent lived in the urban areas in 2020, with 43 percent living in Ulaanbaatar.

While estimates show that poverty in 2020 was slightly lower than it was in 2018, the COVID-19 pandemic has sharply slowed down the pace of poverty reduction. Simulations indicate that in the absence of the pandemic, poverty in 2020 may have been about 3 percentage points lower, suggesting that poverty reduction stalled as a result of the pandemic. The wide array of COVID-19 relief packages, including top-ups on existing social assistance programs, undoubtedly played a crucial role in preventing a rise in poverty between 2018 and 2020.

Source: https://www.montsame.mn/en/read/286911