Integrated Household Income and Expenditure Survey with Living Standards Measurement Survey 2002-2003

The Integrated Household Income and Expenditure Survey with Living Standards Measurement Survey 2002-2003 is one of the biggest national surveys carried out in accordance with an international methodology with technical and financial support from the World Bank and United Nations Development Programme.

Background
This survey was developed in response to provide the picture of the current situation of poverty in Mongolia in relation to social and economic indicators and contribute toward implementation and progress on National Millennium Development Goals articulated in the National Millennium Development Report and monitoring of the Economic Growth Support and Poverty Reduction Strategy, as well as toward developing and designing future policies and actions. Also, the survey enriched the national database on poverty and contributed in improving the professional capacity of experts and professionals of the National Statistical Office of Mongolia.

Purpose
Since the onset of the transition to a market economy of Mongolia our country the need to study changes in people's living standards in relation to household members' demographic situation, their education, health, employment and household engagement in private enterprises has become extremely important. With that purpose and with the support of the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme, the National Statistical Office of Mongolia conducted the Integrated Household Income and Expenditure Survey with Living Standards Measurement Survey-like features between 2002 and 2003. In conjunction with LSMS household interviews the NSO also collected a price and a community questionnaire in each selected soum. The latter collected information on the quality of infrastructure, and basic education and health services.

Main importance of the survey is to provide policy makers and decision makers with realistic information about poverty and will become a resource for experts and researchers who are interested in studying poverty as well as social and economic issues of Mongolia.

In July 2003 the Government of Mongolia completed the Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper in which the Government gave high priority to the fight against poverty. As part of that commitment this paper is a study that intends to monitor poverty and understand its main causes in order to provide policy-makers with useful information to improve pro-poor policies.

Content
The Integrated HIES with LSMS design has the peculiarity of being a sub-sample of a larger survey, namely the Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2002. Instead of administering an independent consumption module, the Integrated HIES with LSMS 2002-2003 depends on the HIES 2002 information on household consumption expenditure. This is why the survey is referred as Integrated HIES with LSMS 2002-2003. This survey is the only source of information of income-poverty, and the questionnaire is designed to provide poverty estimates and a set of useful social indicators that can monitor more in general human development, as well as more specific issues on key sectors, such as health, education, and energy. And, the price and social survey, in conjunction with LSMS household interviews, collected information on the quality of infrastructure, and basic education and health services of each selected soum.

HIES - food expenditure and consumption, non-food expenditure, other expense, income
LSMS - general information, household roster, housing, education, employment, health, fertility, migration, agriculture, livestock, non-farm enterprises, other souces of income, savings and loans, remittances, durable goods, energy
PRICE SURVEY - prices of household consumer goods and services
SOCIAL SURVEY - population and households, economy and infrastructure, education, health, agriculture and livestock, and non-agricultural business

Survey results
The final report of this survey has main results on key poverty indicators, used internationally, as they relate to various social sectors. Its annexes contain information regarding the consumption structure, poverty lines along with the methodology used, as well as some statistical indicators.

The main contributions of this survey report are:

• new poverty estimates based on the latest available household survey, the Integrated HIES with LSMS 2002-2003
• the implementation of appropriate, and internationally accepted, methodologies in the calculation of poverty and its analysis (these methodologies may constitute a reference for the analysis of future surveys)
• a 'poverty profile' that describes the main characteristics of poverty

The first section of the report provides information on the Mongolian economic background, and presents the basic poverty measures that are linked to the economic performance to offer an indication of what happened to poverty and inequality in recent years. A second section goes in much more detail in generating and describing the poverty profile, in particular looking at the geographical distribution of poverty, poverty and its correlation with household demographic characteristics, characteristics of the household head, employment, and assets. A final section looks at poverty and social sectors and investigates various aspects of education, health and safety nets. The report contains also a number of useful, but more technical appendixes with information about the HIES-LSMS 2002-2003 (sample design and data quality), on the methodology used to construct the basic welfare indicator, and set the poverty line, some sensitivity analysis, and additional statistical information.