What Type of Households in Mongolia Are Most Hit by COVID-19?

Abstract

The study aims to validate the measures taken by the government of Mongolia against COVID-19 and to analyse the negative impacts of COVID-19 on the livelihood of different types of households. The survey covers 362 households consisting of five different types, namely, apartment households, ger district households, herder households, vegetable growing households, and small farmer households. Principal component analysis is used to reduce the number of variables to a few factors that best explain the variation in the variables. Two to three components were found from the principal component analyses that describe (i) government policy, (ii) challenges due to COVID-19, and (iii) risk and vulnerability that occurred due to COVID-19. Multiple regression models attributed by the household’s type were used to analyse the impact of the selected variables on the households’ income. According to the regression results, herding households are the least affected, compared to the other four types of households. The government measures to mitigate the negative impacts of COVID-19 have better results for apartment households and ger district households. Rural households are less affected and seem to be more resilient to COVID-19 shocks than other households.

Pastoralists under COVID-19 lockdown

“…Away from national centres, excluded from global (tourism) fows, family and community self-reliance grew. With some State fnancial assistance (Mongolia; see also Gombodorj and Pető 2022) and without any of it (Talek, Kalacha, and Rombo in Kenya), herders expressed pride in their capacity to solve problems autonomously. Counter-intuitively too, the lockdown stimulated socialization and collective action, with people coming together for events and worshipping, organizing 'bush markets' and long-distance trade (Kenya), and feeding urban centres (Mongolia).…”

“…The frst divide lies between rural and urban areas. At national levels, Kenyan and Mongolian (agro)pastoralists had zero COVID-19 cases in those early days, mostly felt safe, and were generally more food secure than urban residents (see also Gombodorj and Pető 2022). Relying on natural resources has been a key lockdown coping strategy of dryland rural communities (Krauss et al 2021), which depends on access to land and secure tenure rights (Walters et al 2021).…”

Impact of childhood 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine introduction on adult pneumonia hospitalisations in Mongolia: a time series analysis

“…In March 2020, the GoM introduced restrictions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the first documented case of locally transmitted COVID-19 infection detected in November 2020. 10 Additional details on the COVID-19 pandemic response in Mongolia can be found in Appendix p 1.…”

Gendered Impacts of the COVID-19 in Mongolia: results from big data research

“…Chetty, Friedman, Hendren, Stepner, and the Opportunity Insights Team (Chetty et al 2020) estimated spending of the US households and found that the initial impacts of COVID-19 on economic activity were largely driven by a reduction in spending by higher-income individuals due to health concerns, which in turn affected businesses that cater to the rich and ultimately reduced the incomes and expenditure levels of low-wage employees of those businesses. Gombodorj and Petö (Gombodorj, Petö 2022) cited that in the United States and the United Kingdom, the least educated women are those who suffer most from the consequences of the pandemic.…”

“…In addition, they found that a decline in final consumption was more pronounced in FHHs than MHHs. Gombodorj and Petö (2022) have assessed the impact of Covid-19 by type of households in Mongolia and concluded that rural households, herders' families were less affected by COVID-19 than households in the capital city and other urban areas in terms of changes in their income and expenditure. But in their research gender of households was not fully specified.…”