What does recent evidence tell us about poverty in Lao PDR

Poverty continues to decline in Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR). Recent estimates from the Laos Expenditure and Consumption Survey (LECS 5) show that the pro portion of poor people-those whose consumption is less than the nationalpoverty line, declined by 4.3 percentage points from 27.56 percent in 2007/8 to 23.24 percent in 2012/13. As Figure 1 shows, the same trend is observed when you consider the proportion of people living on less than 1.25 PPP dollars a day.