Laos’s national poverty rate fell from 46% in 1993 to 18% in 2019, according to the World Bank’s Lao PDR Poverty Profile and Poverty Assessment 2020. The same assessment records a decline from 24.6% in 2013 to 18.3% in 2019. These national figures show long-term progress, while other World Bank measures reveal how results change with the poverty line, location, education, livelihood, and the period being measured.
Contents
- National poverty trends
- What different poverty lines show
- How many people were poor
- Rural, urban, education, and livelihood differences
- Ethnic-group poverty differences
- Inequality and shared prosperity
- Inflation and household financial pressure
National poverty trends
The World Bank’s Lao PDR Poverty Profile and Poverty Assessment 2020 places Laos’s national poverty rate at 46% in 1993 and 18% in 2019. The rate therefore stood 28 percentage points lower in 2019 than in 1993. The assessment also reports a 6.3-percentage-point decline between 2013 and 2019, from 24.6% to 18.3%.
The dates matter because poverty statistics are survey- and methodology-specific. The 18.3% figure for 2019 belongs to the national poverty measure reported in the 2020 assessment. A separate World Bank Poverty & Equity Brief published in April 2023 reports the national poverty headcount rate as 18.3% in 2018. Those two figures are numerically the same, but they refer to different reported measurement years and should not be treated as one undated observation.
The same April 2023 brief reports a multidimensional poverty measure of 10.3% in 2018. This measure is distinct from the national monetary poverty rate: it summarizes deprivation across more than income or consumption alone. Comparing the two percentages directly as if they used the same definition would be misleading.
What different poverty lines show
Poverty rates depend on the threshold used. The April 2023 World Bank Poverty & Equity Brief gives the following 2018 measures for Lao PDR:
| Measure | Poverty line or definition | Rate | Measurement period |
|---|---|---|---|
| National poverty line | Laos national measure | 18.3% | 2018 |
| International line | US$2.15 per person per day, 2017 PPP | 7.1% | 2018 |
| Lower-middle-income line | US$3.65 per person per day, 2017 PPP | 32.5% | 2018 |
| Multidimensional poverty | World Bank multidimensional measure | 10.3% | 2018 |
The international line used in that brief was US$2.15 per person per day in 2017 purchasing-power-parity terms. For Laos in 2018, the brief gives the equivalent as 6,971.1 Lao kip. At the higher lower-middle-income threshold of US$3.65 per person per day in 2017 PPP terms, the equivalent was 11,834.7 Lao kip. The upper-middle-income line was US$6.85 per person per day, equivalent to 22,210.3 Lao kip in 2018.
At the US$2.15 line, the 2018 poverty rate was 7.1%. At the US$3.65 line, it was 32.5%. The April 2023 brief also reports a 2018 poverty rate of 18.3% at the national poverty line. The difference between these rates illustrates why a poverty statistic needs its line and reference year alongside the percentage.
The World Bank’s Lao PDR data page reports a poverty headcount ratio of 7.1% at US$3.00 a day in 2021 PPP terms in 2024. This is a separate indicator from the 2018 US$2.15 and US$3.65 measures in the poverty brief. It should therefore be read as a distinct country-page observation, not as a revision of the earlier survey estimates.
How many people were poor
The April 2023 World Bank Poverty & Equity Brief reports 2,306.7 thousand people below the national poverty line in 2018. At the US$3.65 lower-middle-income line, it reports 507.2 thousand people in poverty in 2018. At the US$6.85 upper-middle-income line, the reported number was 1,273.9 thousand.
These counts correspond to different thresholds and are not interchangeable. A higher income classification line can identify a wider group facing economic disadvantage even when that group is not poor under the national definition. The figures should also not be added together, because the groups defined by the different lines overlap.
For broader demographic context, the World Bank Lao PDR data page reports a total population of 7,769,819 in 2024. Population growth was 1.4% in 2024, and net migration was -10,284 in the same year. These are country-level demographic indicators rather than poverty estimates, but they help identify the population base and context for interpreting more targeted poverty measures.
Rural, urban, education, and livelihood differences
The April 2023 World Bank Poverty & Equity Brief reports a clear rural-urban difference at the US$2.15 line in 2018: poverty was 10% among the rural population compared with 2% in urban areas. The geographic gap is specific to that poverty line and year.
Education is also associated with sharply different measured poverty outcomes. In 2018, households headed by someone without education had a 12% poverty rate at the US$2.15 line. Households headed by someone with tertiary or post-secondary education had effectively no measured poor at that line, according to the same brief.
The World Bank Poverty Assessment 2020 gives additional livelihood-based results. Households headed by an agricultural self-employed person had a poverty rate of 24.6%. The rate was 21.3% for households headed by an unemployed person, 4.5% for households headed by a non-farm self-employed person, and 5.5% for households headed by a paid employee.
The assessment also reports that people in households headed by agricultural self-employed or seasonally unemployed people made up 55% of the population but 75% of the poor. This concentration means that an overall national rate can conceal substantially higher poverty among particular work and seasonal-income groups.
Education differences are similarly pronounced in the assessment’s broader household results. Nearly 35% of people living in households headed by someone with no formal education were poor, compared with 3% for households headed by someone with at least completed upper secondary education. This result and the 2018 US$2.15-line education figures use different reported contexts, so they should be compared directionally rather than merged into one series.
Ethnic-group poverty differences
The World Bank Poverty Assessment 2020 reports the highest poverty incidence among Hmong-Iumien households, at 38.4%. Poverty incidence among Mon-Khmer households was 32.7%, while the reported rate among Sino-Tibetan households was 18.1%.
The assessment also reports that Hmong-Iumien households made up 19% of the poor despite representing less than 10% of the population. This is a distributional finding: the share of poor people attributed to the group was higher than its population share in the assessment. It does not mean that the 19% figure is a poverty rate for Hmong-Iumien households; the 38.4% figure is the incidence measure.
Inequality and shared prosperity
The April 2023 World Bank Poverty & Equity Brief reports a Gini index of 38.8 for Laos in 2018. It also reports annualized consumption growth per capita of 1.91% for the bottom 40% of the distribution over 2012–2018. The shared prosperity premium was -1.17 percentage points over that period.
For comparison, annualized GDP per capita growth was 5.62% in 2012–2018, while annualized household-survey consumption growth per capita was 3.07%. Annual growth of median income or consumption per capita was 2.19% over the same period. These measures describe different parts of the economy and distribution, so GDP growth should not be read as an equivalent measure of household welfare growth.
The Human Capital Index for Lao PDR was 0.5 in 2020, according to the World Bank Lao PDR data page. That index is not a poverty headcount, but it is relevant context for the education and opportunity differences reported in the poverty assessment.
Inflation and household financial pressure
The World Bank sources also document household pressure during the inflation period. The April 2023 World Bank Poverty & Equity Brief reports that the share of households experiencing income losses because of the pandemic fell from 43.4% in May 2022 to 35.1% in December 2022. In January 2023, inflation reached 40.3% year over year, while food and non-alcoholic beverage inflation reached 47.1%.
The brief reports that around two-thirds of families in Laos switched to cheaper food options, reduced food consumption, and reduced education or health spending to cope with high inflation. This is a broad coping description rather than a single percentage for each behavior.
The World Bank Poverty Assessment 2020 provides more specific May 2022 figures. At that time, 43% of households had experienced a decline in total household income relative to pre-pandemic levels, and 21% had experienced a decline of more than half. Rising food prices led 34% of households to reduce food consumption, 39% to switch to cheaper food options or hunt and gather wild food, and 47% to resort to self-production. The assessment reports that 65% of households reduced education and health spending to cope with inflation.
The World Bank Lao PDR data page reports consumer-price inflation of 23.1% in 2024. It also reports GDP of US$16.5 billion, GDP per capita of US$2,124.0, GDP growth of 4.1%, and unemployment of 1.2% in 2024. These 2024 indicators provide current country context, but they do not replace the earlier poverty surveys or establish a new national poverty rate.