Description:
This poverty synthesis notes documents Myanmar's poverty reduction progress leading to the COVID-19 crisis, and setback to these gains brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and coup. The note aims to extract lessons from the Myanmar Poverty Assessment and the World Bank High-Frequency Phone Surveys. Analysis of welfare trends and drivers of poverty changes draws from the Poverty Assessment and covers the period 2005-2017, in line with existing national household surveys. Analysis of COVID-19 and 2021 military coup effects relies on the World Bank High-Frequency Phone Surveys (HFPS) conducted between March 2020 and February 2022. Starting May 2020, seven rounds of the phone survey data have been collected, each with national coverage consisting of a sample of 1,500 households, with the exception of the sixth round. Six survey cover the period May 2020-January 2021 during the pandemic and prior to the military coup, and one covers February 2022, one year after the military takeover on 1 February 2021. Annex one and Annex two provides more details of the survey implementation and respondent profile