Measuring the poverty of herder households in Mongolia

Abstract

Mongolia faces difficulties in eradicating rural poverty, the same as other developing countries in the World. The selection of appropriate measurement is an essential prior step with regard to the complexity of poverty types and specifications. The most widely used poverty measuring methods are Income/cost Per Capita (IPC) per day and multidimensional poverty index (MPI). In the case of nomadic herder households in Mongolia, a livestock number is used as a proxy indicator to measure livelihood and poverty. Considering that, a herder household with less than 200 animals is considered poor, in general principle. This study uses a survey of 350 herder households, divided into three livelihood groups based on the number of livestock following the World Bank methodology; three groups are namely poor, lower wealthy and wealthy herder households. The livelihood of households was measured using IPC and MPI-3 methods, and the study results suggest that the MPI-3 method is not entirely appropriate to measure the herder household’s poverty and needs to adjust and add some indicators. According to their difference, part-time and periodic herders should be identified separately from full-time herders regarding measuring and studying livelihood and poverty levels.