Myanmar’s commercial hub gripped by poverty: UN report

Once a thriving economic powerhouse, the city of Yangon is now facing “an unprecedented surge of poverty” amid the conflict and collapse that has wracked the country since the military coup of 2021, a new United Nations (UN) report says. According to the report, released by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) on June 3, more than 40 percent of Yangon’s 6.2 million inhabitants have fallen below the poverty line. “In 2017, ten percent of Yangon’s urban population was classified as poor. By 2023, this figure had increased to 43 percent,” the report notes. “With an increase in recent years, nearly 2.7 million people in Yangon are now living in poverty.” The military overthrew an elected civilian government in 2021, destroying Myanmar’s nascent, 10-year-old democracy and plunging the country into economic turmoil with devastating consequences for its 54 million people. Yangon served as Myanmar’s national capital before a previous military dictatorship under Sen-Gen Than Shwe moved the union-level administration to Naypyitaw in 1995, and has remained the country’s economic hub. Part of the recent proportional increase of residents living in poverty is attributable to an influx of internally displaced persons (IDPs) fleeing the civil war in other parts of the country since the coup. These internal migrants, including IDPs as well as people seeking better livelihoods, now comprise as much as a third of the population in Yangon, where the poorest residents generally live on the city’s outskirts. The UN said not only are more people in Yangon falling below the poverty line, but that the depth of poverty has increased, meaning that the poor on average are living further below the poverty line than before. The UNDP defined the national poverty line for Myanmar as an income 1,590 kyat (US $0.40) per day in an earlier report. With the disproportionate economic strain on migrants, “the situation is even more concerning in the peri-urban areas,” the UN agency said, referring to areas around the edges of the city. 39 percent of migrant families in Yangon’s such areas are in the lowest quintile for household assets, according to the report. The UNDP’s findings highlight the obstacles migrants face in finding work opportunities in Yangon due to their limited resources as well as the inability to meet documentation requirements, often caused by the breakdown of public services in their regions of origin. A citywide survey administered to 4,800 respondents found that 45 percent reported being unable to access needed medical attention and that 17 percent of children in the poorest households were not attending school. In the daily struggle to meet basic needs, families in Yangon are unable to afford the additional costs of healthcare, and young adults in poor households are often opting out of school to contribute earnings to their families, the report said. The report concluded with a prediction of destabilization in Yangon as “spiralling” poverty and insecurity continues to strain the city’s “already fragile economic and social fabric.” “The crisis unfolding in Yangon’s urban and peri-urban areas is not merely a reflection of an economic downturn—it is a structural unravelling of social and economic stability,” the UN agency said. A father and daughter sitting under a building in Yangon in May 2024 (Myanmar Now)

Myanmar’s commercial hub gripped by poverty: UN report

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) estimated based on survey data that some 2.7 million people were now living under the poverty line in Yangon, Myanmar’s economic centre

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