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                    SUMMARY - Rural Out-Migration and Family Life in Cities in Mongolia

                        (The full paper will be available online at http://www.worldbank.org.mn)

 How large has internal migration been recently in Mongolia? Is it beneficial? The growing concentration
 of migrants in Ulanbaatar has become very visible and inevitable. Its potential social, economic, and
 environmental impacts are of interest to policy makers and the international development community.
 This calls for a good understanding of the nature of migration in Mongolia and its impacts on the life of
 migrants.     Using the 2007/08 Household Socio-Economic Survey, this paper documents the
 characteristics of recent internal migration in Mongolia and assesses the livelihoods of rural-to-urban
 migrants in comparison to those staying in rural areas as well as to local urban residents.

 Many Mongolians have migrated internally. Migrants account for about 31.6 percent of the adult
 population (15 years old or above). The majority of those who have migrated come from soum centers
 and aimag centers. Nearly half of the migrants have chosen the capital city as their destination. Education
 is one of the most important predictors of migration; migrants tend to possess higher levels of education
 than those staying in rural areas. Migration trends over time show two clear peaks around 1990 and 2000.
 Around the year 1990, after economic reforms were implemented, many people lost jobs in
 manufacturing, construction, and public administration and were motivated to migrate to find new
 economic opportunities. Around the year 2000, massive winter storms (dzuds) killed millions of
 livestock, prompting many rural families to move to urban areas.

Figure 1: Rural out-migration is correlated with higher consumption

                 Monthly per capita consumption by migration status 2007/8
              140,000
              120,000
              100,000
    Tugrugs




               80,000
               60,000
               40,000
               20,000
                   0
                             Soum            Local UB       Soum/rural to   Local aimag            Local rural
                         center/rural to     residents       aimag center center residents         residents
                              UB

Notes and Source: see paper

 The analysis in this paper suggests that migrants from rural areas are better off in terms of higher
 consumption and lower chance of falling into poverty. For those who did not migrate from rural areas,
 their consumption level was much lower, and their poverty incidence higher, than those of rural-to-urban
 migrants. However, not all urban destinations are equal: there is a large discrepancy in livelihoods
 between those moving to aimag centers and those moving to Ulanbaatar. These relationships hold even
 when several individual and household characteristics are accounted for.
Assessing the livelihoods of rural-to-urban migrants also reveals significant gaps between the life of rural
migrants residing in the capital city and that of local Ulanbaatar residents in terms of the consumption
level, the incidence of poverty, and several other non-consumption indicators (the likelihood of having
livable housing, the likelihood of having access to potable, and the likelihood of using polluted heating
fuels).