The HSES offers a unique opportunity to review how poverty has evolved over the last five years, to assess the curernt living standards of the population and to provide information to policy-makers on the development challenges for future poverty reduction efforts. This report presents the poverty analysis conducted using the HSES 2007/2008. The similarity with the previous household survey from 2002/03 is a feature that has been fully exploited and the same methology was applied in order to maximize comparability. However, the focus on poverty should not be understood as if this indicator covers all dimensions of economic and social well-being of the population. Further analytical work should be done based on the broad scope of topics provided by the HSES to comprehensively assess the welfare of the people in Mongolia. 

The structure of the report is following:

• Section 1 assesses the current level of poverty and inequality and examines the changes in the last five years, while
• Section 2 describes in more detail the profile of the poor by reviewing the consumption patterns of the population and displaying the association of poverty with characteristics of the household head, with the assets held by the household, with the type of housing the population lives in, and with the safety nets people have access to.

The report also contains the number of useful, but more technical, appendices.

• Appendix A provides information about the HSES,
• Appendix B discusses the methodology for poverty analysis,
• Appendix C shows a comparison with alternative poverty lines,
• Appendix D offers additional output mostly on education, health, and the labor market,
• Appendix E presents the standard errors and confidence intervals associated with the poverty estimations.