Rural Myanmar Research Articles

A comparison between different models of delivering maternal cash transfers in Myanmar.

As part of a randomized controlled trial conducted in Myanmar between 2016 and 2019, we explore the performance of a maternal cash transfer program across villages assigned to different models of delivery (by government health workers vs loan agents of a non-governmental organization) and identify key factors of success. Measures include enrolment inclusion and exclusion errors, failures in payment delivery to enrolled beneficiaries (whether beneficiaries received any transfer, fraction of benefits received and whether there were delays and underpayment of benefit amounts) and whether beneficiaries remained in the program beyond eligibility. We find that women in villages where government health workers delivered cash transfers received on average two additional monthly transfers, were 19.7% more likely to receive payments on time and in-full and were 14.6% less likely to stay in the program beyond eligibility. With respect to the primary health objective of the program-child nutrition-we find that children whose mother received cash by government health workers were less likely to be chronically malnourished compared to those whose mother received cash by loan agents. Overall, the delivery of cash transfers to mothers of young children by government health workers outperforms the delivery by loan agents in rural Myanmar. Qualitative evidence suggests two key factors of success: (1) trusted presence and past interactions with targeted beneficiaries and complementarities between government health workers' expertise and the program; and (2) performance incentives based on specific health objectives along with top-down monitoring. We cannot exclude that other incentives or intrinsic motivation also played a role.

Association between Internet use and depressive symptoms among older adults in two regions of Myanmar: a cross-sectional study

BackgroundInternet use has both positive and negative effects on mental health. However, few studies have examined the association between internet use and mental health among older adults in developing countries. This study aimed to investigate the association between Internet use and depressive symptoms among older adults in two regions of Myanmar.MethodsData based on a visit to 1,200 older adults in urban and rural Myanmar were obtained through stratified random sampling using the cross-sectional baseline survey of the longitudinal study titled “Healthy and Active Aging in Myanmar.”Our analysis included 1,186 participants. The dependent variable was depressive symptoms, and the 15-item version of the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) was used as a continuous variable; the higher the score, the more likely a person was to be depressed. Internet use (one of the questions about household property ownership) was used as an independent variable. After confirming the absence of multicollinearity, we adjusted for age, gender, educational background, activities of daily living, residential area, and frequency of meeting friends, and stratified by subjective economic status (above or below average). We also examined the interaction between internet use and subjective economic status. A linear regression analysis was performed.ResultsAmong the 1,186 participants included in the analysis (women: 59.5%; median age: 68 years old), 202 (17.0%) were Internet users (95% Confidential Interval [CI]: 0.15, 0.19), and they had significantly lower GDS scores than the participants who did not use the Internet (B: -1.59, 95% CI: -2.04, -1.13).GDS showed a negative association with Internet use even in the multivariate analysis (B: -0.95, 95% CI: -1.41, -0.50). However, the interaction term for GDS between Internet use and subjective economic status was not significantly associated (B: 0.43, 95% CI: -1.11, 1.98).ConclusionsInternet use and depressive symptoms were associated especially among the older adults. However, there were no significant interaction between Internet use and subjective economic status for GDS.

Gender gaps in land rights: Explaining different measures and why households differ in Myanmar

AbstractMeasuring and understanding gender differences in property rights is key to informing policy decisions and guiding investments aimed at fostering gender equality. However, there are a myriad ways of assessing property rights. Firstly, we assess which indicators to use and why it matters, focusing on rural Myanmar. Myanmar provides an interesting setting, as a large part of the population customarily follows joint property rights in marriage and upon dissolution of marriage and inheritance. However, documented property rights are in the household head's name – usually a male household member. We find that capturing de facto transfer rights is essential, but understanding discrepancies between reported transfer rights and documented rights will be key to policymakers. Capturing agricultural decision‐making should remain a priority for agricultural projects. Second, we perform household‐ and intra‐household level analyses to explore why we find joint land rights in some, but not all, households; and why some household members have less land rights than others. A common property rights regime positively reinforces women's land rights, but incompletely so. Within households, a person's role in the household, age, and key life cycle events such as parenthood and marriage are key determinants of having land rights.

Socio-economic and agricultural factors associated with stunting of under 5-year children: findings from surveys in mountains, dry zone and delta regions of rural Myanmar (2016-2017).

The study's objective was to investigate multiple underlying social, economic and agricultural determinants of stunting among under-five children in three distinct ecological areas in rural Myanmar. Repeated cross-sectional surveys in three states of Myanmar. Rural households in Chin (mountainous), Magway (plains) and Ayeyarwady (delta). From two purposively selected adjacent townships in each state, we randomly selected twenty villages and, in each village, thirty households with under-five children. Households in the first survey in 2016 were revisited in late 2017 to capture seasonal variations. Stunting increased from 40·4 % to 42·0 %, with the highest stunting prevalence in Chin state (62·4%). Univariate Poisson regression showed factors contributing to child stunting varied across the regions. Adjusted Poisson regression models showed that child's age and short maternal stature (aRR = 1·14 for Chin, aRR = 1·89 for Magway and aRR = 1·86 for Ayeyarwady) were consistently associated with child stunting across three areas. For Chin, village-level indicators such as crop consumption (aRR = 1·18), crop diversity (aRR = 0·82) and land ownership (aRR = 0·89) were significantly associated with stunting. In Magway, the number of household members (aRR = 1·92), wealth status (aRR = 0·46), food security status (aRR = 1·14), land ownership (aRR = 0·85) and in Ayeyarwady, women's decision-making (aRR = 0·67) and indicators related to hygiene (aRR = 1·13) and sanitation (aRR = 1·45) were associated with stunting. Area-specific factors were associated with stunting. Maternal short stature and child age were consistent determinants of stunting. A multi-sectoral local approach, including improvements in transport, is needed to address the intergenerational malnutrition problem.

Correction to: Small fish consumption in rural Myanmar

Correction to: Small fish consumption in rural Myanmar

Small fish consumption in rural Myanmar.

Assessments of fish consumption are based primarily on data from household surveys that do not capture information on the intra-household distribution of the size or species of fish consumed. Such studies can yield partial or misleading information about the adequacy of aquatic food consumption. We address this gap by focusing on individual-level fish consumption within the household, using data from a survey conducted in a rural part of the Ayeyarwady Region in Myanmar-an area with high levels of fish consumption. We disaggregate fish consumption by the gender of household members and by the quantity, species, and size of fish eaten, estimating quantities of fish consumed using models for reference, to identify gendered patterns of fish consumption at the intrahousehold level. We find higher average levels of fish consumption than reported in previous consumption surveys in Myanmar. Moreover, small fish are consumed more frequently than larger-sized fish. The popularity of small fish species highlights the continued reliance of survey respondents on wild fish stocks, despite all surveyed households also practicing small-scale aquaculture. The average consumption of fresh fish reported by women was 36% lower than that reported by men. Men were more likely to eat large fish species, but women ate more small fish, which may contain higher levels of micronutrients vital for addressing nutrient deficiencies.

“The Ancestral Line is through the Father”: The Gendered Production of Statelessness in Rural Myanmar

Myanmar’s citizenship law is stratified by ethnic membership, but, on the books, it is gender neutral. Much attention has therefore focused on ethnic discrimination codified in the law. But individuals whose ethnic identities should provide them with a legitimate claim to citizenship continue to face barriers. Why is this the case? This article examines the additional obstacles that women face legitimating their ethno-national membership and conferring citizenship on their children, despite the gender neutrality of the citizenship law. I argue that the patriarchal structure of evidentiary documentation and patrilineal understandings of ethnic membership transmission shared by village leaders operating as key gatekeepers influence which parent’s claim—father’s or mother’s—to taingyintha (Indigenous or national ethnicity) membership can strengthen or weaken an individual’s chances of obtaining citizenship. The ethno-national identity of women is not evaluated equally to that of men, challenging women’s ability to capitalize on their taingyintha identity for citizenship purposes and contributing to the reproduction of statelessness across generations. I focus on this intersection of gender and ethnicity in establishing ethno-national membership and citizenship across variation in regional geopolitical environments to expand socio-legal knowledge on how formal and informal discrimination together exacerbate inequalities beyond the letter of the law.

Mother's Dietary Diversity and Underweight among Under-five Rural Children in Three Major Agro-climatic Zones, Myanmar.

Children's growth is essential to nutritional status and population health. In 2015, 18.9% of under-five children in Myanmar were underweight, and only 25% of 6-23-month-old children had the minimum dietary diversity (MDD). We conducted this study to assess the association between mother's dietary diversity score (DDS) and underweight among under-five children. This study analyzed data from the "Livelihood and Food Security Survey," a cross-sectional study conducted in 2016 in rural areas in Chin State, Magway, and Ayeyarwady regions. It included 2029 under-five children and used underweight as an outcome variable. We calculated DDSs for mothers of under-five children using the MDD-women methodology. The prevalence of underweight and MDD were estimated. A multivariable binary logistic regression analysis estimated odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). The overall prevalence of underweight was 26.3% (95% CI: 23.4, 29.3), and that of the mother with a MDD score was 29.2% (95% CI: 26.0, 32.8). Multivariable binary logistic regression analysis showed that the prevalence of underweight in children was higher if maternal MDD was not met (adjusted odds ratio = 1.41; 95% CI: 1.05, 1.89). The children's age, types of toilets, and region were independent predictors of being underweight. Underweight among under-five children and diverse food consumption among their mothers are critical public health challenges in rural Myanmar that require urgent action. Nutrition education for rural communities should focus on feeding children with locally available diverse foods.

Embodying and fashioning headship

This article proposes an analysis of local politics through an ethnographic exploration of headship. It approaches the experience and enactment of politics by describing a day in the life of a headman in rural lowland Myanmar to show how an individual embodies and fashions headship through successive social settings. More specifically, this ethnographic device is a way to analyze what a headman, as a situated figure and a political institution embedded in a local society, mediates in context. The paper discusses how a headman composes with multiple layers of responsibilities and chains of relationships, delineating uncertain boundaries between the personal, the political, and the government domains that partly organize local politics. While updating the literature on Bamar lowland society after more than half a century of dictatorship, the paper suggests a position from which we might reconsider the village headman as an ethnographic starting point for an anthropology concerned with history.

Poverty and food insecurity during COVID-19: Phone-survey evidence from rural and urban Myanmar in 2020

Myanmar first experienced the COVID-19 crisis as a relatively brief economic shock in early 2020, before the economy was later engulfed by a prolonged surge in COVID-19 cases from September 2020 onwards. To analyze poverty and food security in Myanmar during 2020 we surveyed over 2000 households per month from June–December in urban Yangon and the rural dry zone. By June, households had suffered dramatic increases in poverty, but even steeper increases accompanied the rise in COVID-19 cases from September onwards. Increases in poverty were much larger in urban areas, although poverty was always more prevalent in the rural sample. However, urban households were twice as likely to report food insecurity experiences, suggesting rural populations felt less food insecure throughout the crisis.

Implementation of a neonatal hepatitis B immunization program in rural Karenni State, Myanmar: A mixed-methods study

BackgroundHepatitis B infection is a major health concern in Myanmar. Hepatitis B birth dose vaccination to prevent mother-to-child transmission is not universal, especially in births outside of health care facilities. Little is documented about delivery of immunization programs in rural Myanmar or in conflict-affected regions. To address this gap, this study describes the implementation of a novel community delivered neonatal hepatitis B immunization program in rural Karenni State, Myanmar.MethodsA mixed-methods study assessed the effectiveness and feasibility of hepatitis B birth dose immunization program. 1000 pregnant women were screened for hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection using point of care testing. Neonates of HBV positive mothers were immunized with a three dose HBV vaccine schedule at birth, 1, and 6 months of age. HBV testing was completed for children at 9 months to assess for infection. Descriptive statistics were collected including demographic data of mothers, neonatal vaccination schedule completion, and child HBV positivity at 9 months. Qualitative data examining barriers to implementation were collected through semi-structured interviews, participant-observation, and analysis of program documents. Themes were codified and mapped onto the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research.Results46 pregnant women tested HBV positive leading to 40 live births. 39 women-child dyads were followed until the 9-month age mark. With the exception of two neonates who received their birth dose past 24 hours, all children received their vaccines on time. None of the 39 children tested positive for HBV at nine months. Themes regarding barriers included adaptability of the program to the rural setting, friction with other stakeholders and not meeting all needs of the community. Identified strengths included good communication and leadership within the implementing ethnic health organization.ConclusionA community delivered neonatal HBV vaccination program by ethnic health organizations is feasible and effective in rural Myanmar.

Agricultural Production Diversity and Child Nutritional Outcomes in Rural Myanmar

This paper empirically investigates the links between agricultural diversity and child nutritional status in rural Myanmar. The data for this analysis come from a two-round survey of households conducted in six rural townships in Myanmar between February 2016 and November 2017. Using the child anthropometric measures haz, whz, waz, stunting, and underweight, our results show that child nutritional status worsened between 2016 and 2017. Our empirical results show that greater agricultural production diversity was associated with poorer anthropometric outcomes among young children aged between 6 and 35 months. Home garden ownership is statistically significant and positively associated with younger children’s anthropometric outcomes, whilst migration is negatively associated with wasting and underweight probability of older children. Livelihood diversification through migration is an important channel to address child undernutrition in our study areas in rural Myanmar, particularly in the long term when children grow older.

Enforcing Social Control in Rural Myanmar: Identifying the Implementer in the Pa-O Self-Administered Zone

Abstract The Pa-O National Organisation (pno) was the only pro-regime ethnic political party that managed to retain all its seats in the 2015 Myanmar election. Amid accusations of rampant land grabbing and faced strong competitions from political parties at the national, regional and local levels, how did the pno manage to secure the seats? Through quantitative analysis, the paper noted a statistically significant volatility in the turnover of village tract leaders (vtl s) in the township where resistance was strongest. This in turn suggested that the pno relied on the vtl s to enforce social control. There is a clear gap in existing literature on how social control is constructed at the local level. Applying the state-in-society theoretical framework by Migdal, this paper aims to identify the ‘implementer’ in the crucial process of social control in the Pa-O saz, thereby helping to shed light on how local politics work.

Aspirations and investments in rural Myanmar

Aspirations and investments in rural Myanmar

Providers preferences towards greater patient health benefit is associated with higher quality of care.

Standard theories of health provider behavior suggest that providers are motivated by both profit and an altruistic interest in patient health benefit. Detailed empirical data are seldom available to measure relative preferences between profit and patient health outcomes. Furthermore, it is difficult to empirically assess how these relative preferences affect quality of care. This study uses a unique dataset from rural Myanmar to assess heterogeneous preferences toward treatment efficacy relative to provider profit and the impact of these preferences on the quality of provider diagnosis and treatment. Using conjoint survey data from 187 providers, we estimated the marginal utilities of higher treatment efficacy and of higher profit, and the marginal rate of substitution between these outcomes. We also measured the quality of diagnosis and treatment for malaria among these providers using a previously validated observed patient simulation. There is substantial heterogeneity in providers' utility from treatment efficacy versus utility from higher profits. Higher marginal utility from treatment efficacy is positively associated with the quality of treatment among providers, and higher marginal utility from profit are negatively associated with quality of diagnosis. We found no consistent effect of the ratio of marginal utility of efficacy vs marginal utility of profit on quality of care. Our findings suggest that providers vary in their preferences towards profit and treatment efficacy, with those providers that place greater weight on treatment efficacy providing higher quality of care.

Defending Shan State's customary tenure systems from below through collective action research

ABSTRACT Much of rural Myanmar remains under local Customary Tenure Systems (CTS), particularly in upland ethnic areas. Yet CTS lack legal recognition and are increasingly vulnerable to appropriation. This paper examines how, since 2016, communities and civil society organisations (CSOs) across Shan State have organised to document their CTS as a basis for advocacy. Findings confirm CTS remain prevalent and valued, but communities are experiencing increasing pressure, through both gradual erosion, and direct appropriation. Communities and CSOs demand statutory recognition and protections. CTS defence is perceived as a priority element of a wider political process against coercive adverse incorporation and for self-determination.

On violence, the everyday, and social reproduction: Agnes and Myanmar’s transition

ABSTRACT This article brings into conversation feminist political economy with critical studies in peace and conflict to examine how Myanmar’s transition is experienced though everyday gendered sites and with what consequences for women living in rural areas of the country, where lives are shaped as much by the actuality as the possibility of violence. The everyday is where these insecurities are felt, feared and negotiated. To illustrate this, I draw on the experiences of Agnes, a woman growing up within the context of prolonged conflict in rural Myanmar. I demonstrate how Agnes’s home, and her bodily labour and vulnerability, is at the locus of a gendered political economy (re)produced both within the home and at the national level. I show how the transition has for women like Agnes resulted in a continuation of insecurity, challenging the legitimacy of Myanmar’s neoliberal reform initiatives as a meaningful pathway towards sustainable peace and security.

The persistence of credit–labor interlinked transactions in rural Myanmar: The case of Kanyingu Village in Ayeyarwady Delta

Financial inclusion has been one of the key agendas for poverty reduction in development practices since the mid-2000s. However, informal finance has clearly not been completely replaced by formal finance in the Global South. This study examines labor-tying credit, which is one type of informal finance, and based on a case study in the Delta region of Myanmar, the study explores the reason for which it persists despite the promotion of financial inclusion policies.This paper found that credit–labor interlinked credits or advance wage payments from farmers to agricultural laborers persist because subsistence is still the key element of life for the poor in rural Myanmar. Formal finance, which includes microfinance and conventional types of informal finance such as credit from money lenders, is only a partial substitution. The poor must stabilize consumption or meet other basic needs in the lean season, and there is no better option or credit source available. In the reality of the subsistence-oriented poor, “How much is left?” is more important than “How much is taken?” Therefore, the high interest rates involved in labor-tying credit is not the major concern of its recipients because of the immediacy of such advances.

Gender and generation in rural politics in Myanmar: a missed space for (re)negotiation?

ABSTRACT The changes that have swept rural Myanmar, transforming landscapes and affecting livelihoods, have ignited rural politics and civil society and grassroot organizations' strategies to counter, resist, negotiate and adapt to these changes. Rural politics have centred on broad calls for agrarian and environmental rights and social justice that do not address women's rights, gender and generational justice explicitly. Based on fieldwork carried out in Myanmar's Taninthary region, and engagement with grassroots organizations, I examine how gender and generational power dynamics play out, transform and are transformed in processes of agrarian and environmental change and rural politics.

Nats in the Land of the Hintha: Village Religion in Lower Myanmar

Nats in the Land of the Hintha:Village Religion in Lower Myanmar Keziah Wallis (bio) Introduction1 When I first arrived in Myanmar in 2012, I had fairly well-developed expectations of the kinds of lived religious practices I would see.2 Fresh from completing a class in Religions of Southeast Asia, I had spent time reading the literature by Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière, Melford Spiro, and other scholars on the complex relationship between Buddhism and the nats (နတ်).3 What I found in Yangon largely conformed to these expectations. It was only when my fieldwork shifted from the urban space of Yangon to a village in the Bago region that I found these expectations fundamentally challenged. As I grew more familiar with the location, [End Page 193] I found significant differences between what my participants told me and what I read in the academic literature on the nats. It was not only the academic literature that seemed to contradict my experiences in the field. Yangonbased participants were often shocked when I described the rituals I had attended in the village. I came to realize that there were multiple distinctions separating the lives of my village-based participants from those depicted in the literature on the nats. First, my participants were Bamar living in contemporary rural Myanmar and not the rural Myanmar of the anthropologists working in the 1960s. Second, unlike the urban-based spirit-mediums (; nat-kátàw) of Brac de la Perrière's research, my participants were not religious specialists. The few who did live in Yangon had only moved there within the past fifteen years. Perhaps most importantly, my participants were from Bago in Lower Myanmar; the majority of research on nats—with the notable exception of Brac de la Perrière's work—has taken place in Upper Myanmar. While Bago today is included as part of myanmangainngán (), historically the space has been predominantly Mon. The city of Bago was founded by the Mon in the thirteenth century as the center of the influential Ramaññadesa Kingdom. The city was also the center of the Taungoo Empire, founded in the sixteenth century by Tabinshweti-min who had ties to the Bamar court at Ava and ostensibly "became Mon" in order to rule from the Mon city (Shorto 1961:68; Lieberman 1978:457). Inscriptions at Thaton locate Bamar presence within the Mon political center in the eleventh and twelfth centuries (Stadtner 2008:202) and suggest long-standing connections between Bamar and the Lower Myanmar region. While Bamar migration to Bago would have [End Page 194] undoubtedly occurred during Tabinshweti-min's reign when it was the center of the Bamar court, the widespread Bamar settlement of the region did not begin until the eighteenth century (Lieberman 2003:1:203). The pattern intensified during the Konbaung era (1752–1885) as Bamar people migrated south to work in the British control delta regions (see Adas 1974:chap. 2). According to the 1983 Population Census, Bamar made up 88.9% of the population of Bago (Ministry of Home and Religious Affairs 1987:I–14). While the data on ethnicity for the 2014 census have not been released, this ratio is unlikely to have changed substantially. Primary research for this paper took place in Shwe Moe,4 a medium-sized village which exemplifies the dynamics of identity in Bago. The Shwemawdaw pagoda, one of the premier Mon Buddhist sites in Myanmar, is visible from the village's southwest fields. All thousand residents of the village identified themselves as "only Bamar."5 Residents' pride in their "only Myanmar" (read Bamar) heritage was often distinguished with the neighboring village which shares the same village tract and is comprised of Mon and Bamar inhabitants. Despite expressing an explicitly Bamar identity, close conversations frequently revealed more complex ethnic heritages, and many residents saw themselves as the descendants of Bamar men who migrated from Upper Myanmar during the early colonial period and married Mon women already living in the region (see also Brac de la Perrière 1996:57). There is historical evidence to support this narrative of Mon-Bamar heritage. Konbaung policy of the...