Mongolia

Overview

Mongolia has undergone profound political, economic and social changes in the last years.Today, with high GDP growth rates (around 9 perecent), poverty remains significantly high.

Although the economic structure has changed, still the agriculture sector accounts for around 20 percent of the GDP, and around 40 percent of the population lives in rural areas and is engaged in agriculture. The age dependency rate has significantly decreased since 1990 (see graphs below).

Before 1990, while Mongolia was a relatively poor country, there was little appreciation and discussion of issues of poverty and inequality.

This reflected a number of factors, including high and stable levels of employment, a relatively low degree of inequality in the distribution of income, and a significant state support for vulnerable groups through the provision of state benefits and subsidized services, such as an extensive system of boarding schools, childcare facilities, and healthcare.

During the socialist era, significant gains occurred in expanded health and education coverage to the entire population, resulting in high male and female adult literacy rates, universal primary enrollment ratios, universal vaccination rates, falling infant mortality rates, and increased life expectancy.

Since 1990, real wage rates have been eroded, poverty has risen, unemployment has emerged as a major social issue, and cutbacks in public expenditure have led to a decline in the quality of healthcare and education.

School dropout rates and non-enrolment have risen, with a growing number of street children and increases in criminal behavior. While infant mortality rates have improved from 64 per 1000 births in 1990 to 30 in 2002, maternal mortality rates have deteriorated from 118 per 10,000 to 158 in 2000, to 124 in 2002. Poverty incidence in 2002 was about 36 percent using a poverty line of about US$0.70 a day and over 50 percent for a poverty line of US$0.90 a day. Inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient was estimated at about 0.33 in 2002.

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  Ongoing Projects
  Closed Projects
  Analytical and Advisory Activities

Sustainable Livelihood Project - P067770

Approval Date: 11 June 2002
Closing Date: 31 December 2006

The Sustainable Livelihoods Project is intended to support the shift in Mongolia's national anti-poverty strategy away from welfare measures, towards those that promote secure and sustainable livelihoods for all.

The project's development objective is to develop an effective approach to promoting improved, secure, and sustainable livelihood strategies that are developed, demonstrated and validated in selected areas, and create institutional capacity to replicate and scale-up these  strategies in Phase II of the Program.

Poverty will be addressed primarily by increasing the capacity of poor and vulnerable households in rural areas and smaller urban settlements to better manage risk and build up income-generating assets, and by facilitating investment in community-level infrastructure in the same  areas.

This would be achieved through investments in four components, namely pastoral risk management; micro-finance outreach; local initiatives fund; and program management and policy support.

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Closed Projects

Poverty Alleviation for Vulnerable Groups Project - P036417

Approval Date: 6 July 1995
Closing Date: 31 December 2000

The overall development objective of the Poverty Alleviation for Vulnerable Groups Project was to mitigate the adverse effects of Mongolia's economic transition on the poor segments of the vulnerable groups.

The project aimed at contributing to the development of the institutional framework for implementing and coordinating the National Poverty Alleviation Program and facilitating community participation.

The project's success in achieving its objective of creating gainful employment and income for poor people in urban and rural communities was mixed. The public works component was successful in creating temporary employment and in halting the deterioration of economic and social infrastructure, and although the duration of employment was too short to have an impact on the livelihoods of the poor, the infrastructure works themselves contributed to poverty reduction.

While the public works component was largely successful, the achievements of the productive activities sub-component were modest, due mainly to flaws in the original Vulnerable Group Organization credit scheme design.

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Analytical and Advisory Activities (AAA)

Enhancing Social Service Delivery and Social Protection for the Poor and Vulnerable - P085581 (in progress)

As Mongolia continues its transition into a market economy, the challenges associated with addressing the needs of the poor and vulnerable by the Government continue to increase.

The government's flagship program is a cash transfer program targeted to poor families with children. Improved coordination between this and other safety net programs, as well as within and across line ministries, is necessary to facilitate a more coherent social strategy.

An additional challenge remains to enhance the tools by which to adequately implement, monitor, and evaluate social programs. The objectives of the analysis include an assessment of the safety net structure, the targeting of social programs, generation of accurate and appropriate data for the implementation of sound social sector policies, and monitoring and evaluation of their outcomes.

Evaluation of Poverty-Targeted Programs - P097368 (in progress)

As a result of the Social Security Master Plan, the Government of Mongolia set the objectives of rationalizing social assistance and improving its targeting.

In a major effort to move away from the “old” system of social assistance, in 2005 the Government created a targeted conditional cash transfer program, the Child Money Program. 

The World Bank, as part of its collaboration with the Government in the sector, has been active in providing inputs to assess the extent to which the Child Money Program, the first of a “new” family of social assistance interventions, is aligned with the goals established in the sector Master Plan.

The World Bank identified two main areas of analytical and advisory support in the spring of 2005: an assessment of poverty-targeted programs and monitoring and evaluation of social programs.

A policy note on   Targeting the Child Money Program in Mongolia (762kb pdf) has been produced as a first output of the MongoliaEvaluation of Poverty Targeted Program.

Improving the Data Collection on Children with Disabilities (in progress)

For countries attempting to reach the last 10% to 15% of children not enrolled in primary education, addressing the needs of children with disabilities is particularly important, since they are often the last considered.   However, due to a lack of data, governments are unsure about how to identify and scale up best practices.  This project, part of the Netherlands partnership program, will help build local capacity for collecting real-time data on children with disabilities that can be used to monitor education services and evaluate the impact of interventions intended to improve them. Ongoing disability data collection that is built into countries’ own Education Management Information Systems (EMIS) is needed because survey data – which is usually scarce and of poor quality – is too expensive and generally not suitable for M&E in national programs for a relatively small, hard to identify group. 

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