The geography of poverty and inequality in the Lao PDR

This study uses a relatively new method called “small area estimation” to estimate various measures of poverty and inequality for the provinces, districts and villages of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR). The method was applied by combining information from the 2002-03 Lao Expenditure and Consumption Survey and the 2005 Population and Housing Census.

The results indicate that the poverty rate (P0) in the Lao PDR is greatest in the remote areas of the east and southeast along the Vietnamese border. Poverty rates are intermediate in the lowland area of the Mekong River basin in the west. The lowest poverty rates are found in Vientiane and other cities. These estimates are reasonably accurate for the provinces and districts, but the village-level estimates must be used with caution since many are not very precise. Comparing these results with previous estimates of poverty, the authors find a fairly good agreement among the different studies.