Livelihoods and welfare: Findings from the ninth round of the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey (July – October 2025)
The ninth round of the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey, a nationally and regionally representative phone survey, was implemented in July-October 2025 (Q2–Q3) with a recall period covering the previous 3 months. It follows eight earlier rounds of surveys that have been carried out since December 2021. This report documents recent livelihood and welfare dynamics over this survey period.
Overall, household welfare conditions remain highly fragile. In terms of income sources, own farming, farm wages, and non-farm businesses continue to be the most important livelihoods in rural areas, while non-farm businesses and non-farm salaried employment remain most important in urban areas. Non-farm wage and non-farm salaried employment each account for around 20 percent of households nationally.
Production-related constraints in rural areas such as weather, pests, and input costs have remained broadly similar to previous rounds, but a growing share of households reported low selling prices as their main challenge. Among crop farmers, low selling prices became the most frequently cited challenge in Q2–Q3 2025. Livestock producers faced fewer price-related pressures and were more affected by high input costs, while fishing households reported both access constraints, a quarter of fishers could not reach their ponds, and low selling prices. Non-farm businesses continued to report weak demand, with many households indicating that fewer customers are purchasing their products.
Production-related constraints in rural areas such as weather, pests, and input costs have remained broadly similar to previous rounds, but a growing share of households reported low selling prices as their main challenge. Among crop farmers, low selling prices became the most frequently cited challenge in Q2–Q3 2025. Livestock producers faced fewer price-related pressures and were more affected by high input costs, while fishing households reported both access constraints, a quarter of fishers could not reach their ponds, and low selling prices. Non-farm businesses continued to report weak demand, with many households indicating that fewer customers are purchasing their products.
In rural areas, nominal income growth was far more modest, rising by just 3 percent in real terms between Q3-Q4 2024 and Q2-Q3 2025. Although agricultural wage rates increased significantly, falling prices for most crops compressed farm revenues. Given that a large share of rural households depended directly on agriculture and farm-linked non-farm businesses, lower commodity prices offset wage gains and limited overall income growth. As a result, rural real incomes remained more than 30 percent below Q2 2022 levels.
In Q2-Q3 2025, income poverty declined by 2 percentage points. This reduction was driven entirely by urban areas, where poverty fell by 6 percentage points, reflecting the strong rebound in urban real incomes. Rural poverty, by contrast, remained unchanged. The recovery was uneven across socioeconomic groups. Asset-rich households experienced the largest gains, while poverty among asset-poor households remained persistently high. Poverty rates increased among farmers, when compared to the entire year of 2024. Conflict-affected households also continued to face very high poverty rates, with no meaningful improvement. In contrast, households receiving remittances maintained substantially lower poverty rates than those without remittance income.
Authors
van Asselt, Joanna; Ei Win, Hnin; Oo, Theingi
Citation
van Asselt, Joanna; Ei Win, Hnin; and Oo, Theingi. 2026. Livelihoods and welfare: Findings from the ninth round of the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey (July – October 2025). Myanmar SSP Working Paper 75. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/181856
Keywords
Asia; South-eastern Asia; Livelihoods; Welfare; Social Welfare; Income; Poverty
