feed.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" ><generator uri="https://jekyllrb.com/" version="4.2.0">Jekyll</generator><link href="https://mongoliandatastories.com/feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" /><link href="https://mongoliandatastories.com/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" /><updated>2022-01-31T17:39:40+08:00</updated><id>https://mongoliandatastories.com/feed.xml</id><title type="html">Mongolian Data Stories</title><subtitle>Telling Mongolia's story through data.</subtitle><author><name>Robert Ritz</name></author><entry><title type="html">Do families with more children make less money?</title><link href="https://mongoliandatastories.com/Household-income-by-children" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Do families with more children make less money?" /><published>2022-01-30T00:00:00+08:00</published><updated>2022-01-30T00:00:00+08:00</updated><id>https://mongoliandatastories.com/Household-income-by-children</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://mongoliandatastories.com/Household-income-by-children">&lt;p&gt;Any parent will tell you that having children is expensive. Raising children takes large quantities of clothes, food, education, toys, and the most costly thing of all, time.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Those same parents will also probably tell you their children are the best things they have made in their lives. As my wife has started saying, once you have children, you make every decision in your life with them in mind.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Women in Mongolia tend to have more children than in Western countries. In 2019 there were &lt;a href=&quot;https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=MN&quot;&gt;2.8 children&lt;/a&gt; born per woman in Mongolia, significantly lower than the peak in 1965 of 7.5 children born per woman.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Let’s put this trend in perspective and compare Mongolia’s fertility rate with other countries.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/wages_by_children/baby_bump.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We can see that it is a widespread trend for birth rates to have gone down over time since 1960. Yet around 2005, the trend in Mongolia started going up again. Mongolia today has a similar birth rate to China’s in 1979.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Other former communist countries show a similar trend. According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=MN-KZ-RU-KG&quot;&gt;World Bank data&lt;/a&gt;, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Kyrgyzstan showed a decreasing birth rate that hit the lowest point around 2000. Since then, the birth rate in these countries has gone up.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I’m not sure what caused this “baby bump,” but it is certainly notable. I’ve been told by many Mongolians that increasing the country’s population is a matter of national security and that a high birth rate is a good thing.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;When I asked why I was nearly always told the same reason. Since powerful, high population countries surround Mongolia, the country needs more people. This reason sounds quite lovely and patriotic. Unfortunately, at current birth rates, it would take hundreds of years to match even Russia’s population of 144 million, not to mention China’s 1.4 billion people.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So perhaps Mongolians have more children because of a sense of national pride or because they are freer than in the communist past. Perhaps what motivates some women is the “honored mother” medal to mothers with four or more children.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;All of this got me thinking about the economics of having more or fewer children. It seems clear that families with more children probably spend less money per child or buy less expensive products than a family with fewer children.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;But what about income? Do families with more children make less money? I dug into the 2019 &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nso.mn/nada/index.php/catalog/121&quot;&gt;Household Socioeconomic Survey&lt;/a&gt; run by the National Statistics Office to answer this. I calculated the average annual household income by the number of children. Let’s take a look.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/wages_by_children/wages_children.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Households with two children earn the most money on average. Households with five children earn roughly 40% less than households with two children.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Households with 0 children make the least. This is perhaps because these households are either relatively young or old enough not to have children in the house.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;While this is a very clear picture, the cause isn’t clear. Do couples choose to have fewer children so both mother and father can work? On the opposite end, are mothers (or fathers) choosing the stay home to care for the children, resulting in a lower household income?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In 2020 Mongolia &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.mn/r/2437522/&quot;&gt;increased the child allowance&lt;/a&gt; to 100,000MNT per child under 18. It would put an average household with five children at nearly the same income as two children. The Mongolian government either wants to encourage people to have more children or support those families that choose to.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;You probably have a pretty strong opinion of how many children are “right” for your family. Family planning is a very personal decision. The data reflects averages about the population and isn’t destiny for any particular family.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Mongolia’s current baby bump seems like it might deflate in the coming years. What remains is a very high percentage of young people. 31% of Mongolians were &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.statista.com/statistics/678086/mongolia-children-as-a-percentage-of-the-population/&quot;&gt;under the age of 14&lt;/a&gt; in 2020. Overcrowded schools and traffic seem to be the result. We don’t know yet whether those born in the baby bump (after 2003 or so, mainly Gen Z) will end up better off than their millennial parents.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
  &lt;p&gt;If you are interested in seeing the code used to collect or analyze the data for this article, you can find it &lt;a href=&quot;https://deepnote.com/project/Do-families-with-more-children-make-less-money-JPjK1D_ASDiICZTTxOz-Lg/%2FFamily%20Size%20and%20Income.ipynb&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;hr /&gt;

&lt;h4 id=&quot;mds-newsletter&quot;&gt;MDS Newsletter&lt;/h4&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Thank you for reading. Mongolian Data Stories has a free newsletter! To receive new articles straight to your inbox so you never miss out, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.getrevue.co/profile/mongoliandatastories&quot;&gt;click here to sign up&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</content><author><name>Robert Ritz</name></author><category term="salary" /><category term="society" /><category term="family" /><summary type="html">Any parent will tell you that having children is expensive. Raising children takes large quantities of clothes, food, education, toys, and the most costly thing of all, time.</summary><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://mongoliandatastories.com/images/wages_by_children/baby_hand.jpg" /><media:content medium="image" url="https://mongoliandatastories.com/images/wages_by_children/baby_hand.jpg" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" /></entry><entry><title type="html">2021 Wrap-Up - Are Mongolians richer today than in 2011?</title><link href="https://mongoliandatastories.com/2021-wrap-up" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="2021 Wrap-Up - Are Mongolians richer today than in 2011?" /><published>2021-12-31T00:00:00+08:00</published><updated>2021-12-31T00:00:00+08:00</updated><id>https://mongoliandatastories.com/2021-wrap-up</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://mongoliandatastories.com/2021-wrap-up">&lt;p&gt;As 2021 ends, I’m reflecting on all the changes I’ve seen since I moved to Mongolia in 2012. As I’ve thought beyond the KFC’s, the CU’s, the new malls, and other surface level “developments”, I’ve been thinking of larger questions. One of the bigger of these large questions is a simple one, are Mongolians making more money than they used to?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It seems that every time you see statistics about average salaries in Mongolia, it seems to always be increasing. This was reinforced recently when the Lemon Press newsletter (&lt;a href=&quot;https://lemonpress.mn/news/tsalin/&quot;&gt;link in Mongolian&lt;/a&gt;) noted that 6% of Mongolian make more than 3 million Tugriks per month (about $1,050 USD at the current exchange rate).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Their data, sourced from the National Statistics Office (of course where else?), also showed that nearly 25% of Mongolians make more than 1.5 million Tugriks per month. Lemon Press only looked at 2020 to 2021, and given my contemplative mood I wanted to compare a larger date range.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So, let’s do just that.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;do-nearly-10-years-make-a-big-difference&quot;&gt;Do nearly 10 years make a big difference?&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Before you see the chart, think back on your own life in the past 10 years. Ask yourself, have things gotten better or worse economically for you and your family over this time? I’m hoping the answer is better, and probably for most of you, it is.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;One way to see how things have changed is to group households by an income bracket, 300,000-600,000 MNT per month for example. We can compare the number of households in each of these brackets over time to see if households are making more money than they used to.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The latest data available is from 2020 and goes back to 2011. Let’s see how Mongolian households have changed their income over these 9 years.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/economic-stratification/2011v2020.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Wow, what a difference 9 years makes. My first reaction when seeing this chart was a good kind of shock. I was impressed by how this income distribution has moved up so much. Rather than a downward sloping graph where most households are in the lower bracket, more than half of households now make more than 900,000 MNT per month.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This is notable progress and it shows that Mongolia’s economy is rewarding those with marketable skills and entrepreneurial ability. There is always a good amount of criticism towards petty capitalism or corrupt officials, but I continue to see healthy businesses providing valuable services to Mongolians.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;With that good news given, I want to bring up a point of concern with this data.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;what-about-inflation&quot;&gt;What about inflation?&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Ah yes, inflation. That ever-present beast that gnaws away at your hard-earned savings. Inflation is often discussed in Mongolia, but often in terms of consumer prices or savings rates. Yet my point of concern is connected to spending power.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Inflation causes prices to rise, which is of course not good if your income is stagnant. If your income is going up, then you are racing inflation to improve your living conditions. Which will rise faster, your salary or the prices in the stores and the price of apartments?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In 9 years, from 2011 to 2020, the average monthly wage in Mongolia tripled. This is an impressive statistic, but what about inflation?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Let’s see how average monthly wages fared when adjusted for inflation.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/economic-stratification/inflation_adjusted_wages.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To make the chart above I took the consumer price index (CPI) inflation measure for each year and adjusted the average monthly wage for that year. The results are less impressive than the income bracket chart above.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Instead of seeing wages triple over 9 years, we see a 59% increase. Put another way, if you made 1.2 million MNT a month in 2020, that is equivalent to about 670,000 MNT per month in 2011.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This is still very positive, and there have been many positive economic signals in these years. A major signal of this was in 2015 when &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.fao.org/mongolia/fao-en-espana/mongolia-at-a-glance/es/#:~:text=Since%202000%2C%20the%20economy%20has,and%20upper%20middle%20income%20countries.&quot;&gt;Mongolia changed classifications&lt;/a&gt; from a lower middle-income country to an upper-middle-income country.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;There are still areas of concern. What’s missing from the above data are those that choose not to disclose their income. This could be a large group of people on the lower end who don’t have consistent work. It could also be those at the very high end, whose income will come from investments in areas that are not a traditional job.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;These blind spots in the data will be the areas average people get the most upset about.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So with 2021 wrapped up let’s look forward to the next several years.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;whats-ahead-for-2022-and-beyond&quot;&gt;What’s ahead for 2022 and beyond?&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I won’t be making predictions, because that is a fool’s game. But I would like to make some observations about areas I’ll be looking at in 2022 and beyond.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Mining continues to grow and contribute significantly to Mongolia’s economy. The negotiations over Oyu Tolgoi are almost guaranteed to end up favorably for Mongolia, and Rio Tinto will be happy to have the dispute over with so the real business of money making can continue with the underground expansion.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The past few years have shown a big increase in the Mongolian Stock Exchange with both valuation and volume. Yet recent IPO’s have been underwhelming. The recent CU IPO is one example. It seems clear this IPO was designed to inject money into the business so the original investor(s) could have a nice exit and recoup their initial investment. Never mind a lack of profitability and a sliding stock price.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If 2022 brings more IPO’s of this type then the Mongolian Stock Exchange will lose whatever attention it started to receive from international investors.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I’m desperately hoping that Mongolia’s economy will diversify. Venture capital has &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/how-much-does-venture-capital-drive-us-economy&quot;&gt;proven to be the key ingredient&lt;/a&gt; in the United States’ success in innovation and tech. Yet the venture capital field in Mongolia is almost non-existent. Investors want high short-term gains. 9 out of 10 venture bets fail in the US, a statistic almost guaranteed to make a Mongolian investor stay away.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Even so, I’ve been impressed with the nascent display of startups, both tech and non-tech. This shows that young people especially are hungry to see the economy improve, even if the older generation isn’t always willing to help invest.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;My wish for 2022 is for companies to realize that starting in Mongolia then expanding internationally is a difficult and perhaps losing formula. The Mongolian market and international market have few similarities, and the average European consumer wants very different things from the average Mongolian consumer. I would love to see companies start with the sole intention of selling their products or services internationally.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This would allow higher salaries that can compete with the mining industry and perhaps attract highly skilled workers who would otherwise leave the country to work abroad.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;welcome-to-2022&quot;&gt;Welcome to 2022&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I hope you’ve enjoyed the articles on Mongolian Data Stories over the past few months. I believe strongly that these explorations in Mongolian data can improve our understanding of the country we live in. After all, with the proper understanding, we can take effective action to improve our lives.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I wish you all a happy and prosperous 2022! Thank you for reading!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
  &lt;p&gt;If you are interested in seeing the code used to collect or analyze the data for this article, you can find it &lt;a href=&quot;https://deepnote.com/project/Mongolias-Economic-Stratification-HBfK5ozLQDmfb6J1jYeo_A/%2FArticle.ipynb&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;hr /&gt;

&lt;h4 id=&quot;mds-newsletter&quot;&gt;MDS Newsletter&lt;/h4&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Thank you for reading. Mongolian Data Stories has a free newsletter! To receive new articles straight to your inbox so you never miss out, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.getrevue.co/profile/mongoliandatastories&quot;&gt;click here to sign up&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</content><author><name>Robert Ritz</name></author><category term="economy" /><summary type="html">As 2021 ends, I’m reflecting on all the changes I’ve seen since I moved to Mongolia in 2012. As I’ve thought beyond the KFC’s, the CU’s, the new malls, and other surface level “developments”, I’ve been thinking of larger questions. One of the bigger of these large questions is a simple one, are Mongolians making more money than they used to?</summary><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://mongoliandatastories.com/images/economic-stratification/ub-night.png" /><media:content medium="image" url="https://mongoliandatastories.com/images/economic-stratification/ub-night.png" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" /></entry><entry><title type="html">Which grocery store in Ulaanbaatar is cheapest?</title><link href="https://mongoliandatastories.com/UB-Market-Price-Analysis" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Which grocery store in Ulaanbaatar is cheapest?" /><published>2021-12-01T00:00:00+08:00</published><updated>2021-12-01T00:00:00+08:00</updated><id>https://mongoliandatastories.com/UB-Market-Price-Analysis</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://mongoliandatastories.com/UB-Market-Price-Analysis">&lt;p&gt;Since moving to Ulaanbaatar in 2013, I’ve been to nearly every market in the city. I was struck by the opposite worlds of the zakh and the supermarket. One feels bustling but is arguably less convenient (no carts, very little parking). The other is more structured and has more packaged products but is often lacking in the selection of fresh foods. In some ways it’s indicative of the dichotomy that exists in Ulaanbaatar in general between the new and the old, the urban and periurban.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Zakh (зах) translates to market and is segmented in different areas such as vegetables and fruit, meat, and dry goods. In each area, vendors rent or own stalls where they sell their products. The products in each section are generally the same from stall to stall, with little variation. Cash used to be the only way to make a purchase, but more recently, card machines have become quite common (even preferred!).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A supermarket in Ulaanbaatar is pretty comparable to western supermarkets. Aisles of products with often many choices for each product. The main exception is the meat section. I’ve noticed that most supermarkets in Ulaanbaatar don’t stock much fresh meat, and if they do the selection is quite small (except Emart, which has a quite large meat section).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Even casual observers will note that prices in a zakh are lower than in supermarkets. Most of us only have a limited sample to work with, which means our observations are limited. Fortunately, the National Statistics Office of Mongolia tracks weekly prices for several products at all major supermarkets and zakhs in Ulaanbaatar. The products tracked are staple food products (meat, flour, bread, butter, eggs, etc.) that are most common in households. My understanding is this data feeds into consumer price index (CPI) inflation calculations based on the basket of goods identified by the government.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Don’t know what a “basket of goods” is? Imagine a shopping cart for the whole country. What set of products would nearly every family choose to purchase for their home? Probably basics like flour, eggs, milk, bread, meat, potatoes, carrots, and a few others. This set of products is then tracked to understand both CPI and can also be used to assess things like the poverty line, cost of living, and others.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;You probably aren’t aware of this data source, as it is available only on the Mongolian 1212.mn page and also under a menu that might not grab your attention. If you are interested, check it out &lt;a href=&quot;https://1212.mn/BookLibrary.aspx?category=004&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I identified three questions I wanted to answer while looking at the data.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Which markets are most/least expensive over time?&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Did COVID-19 have a noticeable impact on prices?&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Do markets use psychological pricing? For example, carrots for 1,899 instead of 1,900 tugriks.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So, let’s get to it!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;what-markets-and-products-do-the-data-cover&quot;&gt;What markets and products do the data cover?&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To collect the data, I built a scraper (&lt;a href=&quot;https://deepnote.com/project/UB-Market-Price-Analysis-XCm2UVeZTs-MqI4_J0lh4g/%2FData%20Collection.ipynb&quot;&gt;link to code&lt;/a&gt;) to collect all Excel files from the NSO webpage and merged them into one file. I only selected files after January 1, 2019.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Here is a heatmap showing which products are available at each market around the city. Market names and product names were translated into English.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/market_prices/product_availability.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As you can see, not all products are always available at every zakh or supermarket. Goat meat and reserve meat are two notable items here. Goat meat isn’t always in demand in Mongolia, and reserve meat is only seasonably available depending on the Ministry of Agricultures program to provide low-cost meat.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I merged Mercury and Ikh Nayad as most of the shop keepers from the old Mercury market moved to Ikh Nayad. Also, Max Supermarket changed its name to M Mart, so I’ve reflected that in the chart as well. Saruul is a newer zakh, so there weren’t as many records for it.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;From all the products in the chart above, I decided to select the eight common products (in my mind) to make the further analysis simpler and a bit easier to digest. They are:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Suu Brand Milk, 1L&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Egg, Russian&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Potato, Mongolian&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Carrot, Mongolian&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;White Rice&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Atar Brand Bread&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Beef w/Bones&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Mutton w/Bones&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;There will always be “one more thing” people may want to see in the analysis, but I hopefully covered the most common products. From here, let’s move on to looking at price differences between markets.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;which-markets-are-mostleast-expensive&quot;&gt;Which markets are most/least expensive?&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you live in Ulaanbaatar, I’m sure you already have an opinion about this. Something like,&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;“The meat is good at Bayanzurkh, but it’s cheaper at Bars.”&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Or perhaps something more specific and even devious.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;“Emart sells their vegetables for cheaper, but their meat is always the most expensive. But it’s great quality (Because obviously if it’s more expensive, it’s better quality!).”&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I’ve never been to a country where people didn’t complain about prices in the store. It’s practically part of the human condition. Personal observations are always made with a limited sample, so let’s step back and see what the data says.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It was tough to figure out how to present this data. I generally prefer to show a time series to give the complete picture and let people decide. Even with only eight products, the time series graphs were confusing, and there wasn’t much of a clear point. I wanted to take a different approach.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A dumbbell chart allows you to see the difference in two times of several things all in one chart. You lose everything between those two times, but it gives a simplified picture that is much easier to digest than a line plot.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I created one chart for each of the eight products I selected. Each chart shows the difference in price from November 2019 to November 2021 for each market. This allows you to see how prices have changed and which markets are cheaper or more expensive between these two times.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Let’s take of look to see how eggs have changed in price over the past two years.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/market_prices/eggs_dumbbell.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;You can see that the price of eggs has increased. Supermarkets are also clearly more expensive per egg. The most expensive supermarket is 25% more expensive than several of the zakh’s.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I built a dumbbell chart for each of the eight products. Here is a gallery showing each of the charts. You can click on each to see them.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class=&quot;gallery-box&quot;&gt;
	&lt;div class=&quot;gallery&quot;&gt;
		&lt;img src=&quot;/images/market_prices/bread_dumbbell.png&quot; /&gt;
		&lt;img src=&quot;/images/market_prices/carrots_dumbbell.png&quot; /&gt;
		&lt;img src=&quot;/images/market_prices/potato_dumbbell.png&quot; /&gt;
		&lt;img src=&quot;/images/market_prices/rice_dumbbell.png&quot; /&gt;
		&lt;img src=&quot;/images/market_prices/milk_dumbbell.png&quot; /&gt;
		&lt;img src=&quot;/images/market_prices/beef_dumbbell.png&quot; /&gt;
		&lt;img src=&quot;/images/market_prices/mutton_dumbbell.png&quot; /&gt;
		&lt;img src=&quot;/images/market_prices/eggs_dumbbell.png&quot; /&gt;
	&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;p&gt;After looking at these, you can come to some pretty easy conclusions. For most products, supermarkets are more expensive than at the zakh. Also, pretty much everything has gotten more expensive in the past two years. The exception is potatoes, specifically at Emart. For some reason, those got cheaper. &lt;em&gt;Insert sinister conspiracy theory here.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I also think it’s worth it to look at the supermarket you usually shop at and ask yourself why you shop there? Are you sensitive to small changes in price, or do you choose your store because of convenience? If you are very price-sensitive, you now have some better information to make your decision. If not, well, then you at least know what the price picture is in other places.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;One thing that surprised me is that Emart is not always the most expensive supermarket. It was my observation going into this article, and it didn’t seem to be true. Just keep in mind that our sample of products is limited to a few everyday staple products. Emart may keep prices low for these products to drive customers to the store and then charge higher prices for prepared or packaged food.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Let’s move on to the next question.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;has-covid-19-impacted-prices&quot;&gt;Has COVID-19 impacted prices?&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;There isn’t much to do here besides plot a time series of prices and take a look. Here it is. I’ve excluded meat prices as they are significantly higher than the other prices. The prices in the chart below are the average weekly prices of all markets in the dataset.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/market_prices/inflation_covid.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Considering that COVID-19 started in 2020 and the first serious lockdown happened in late 2020 in Mongolia, we don’t see much change in prices during that time. What we do see is a pretty significant increase in the past few months. In July 2021, carrots went above their maximum price from the previous two years. For the other products in the list, we see a clear upward trend since around September 2021.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;There are many moving pieces to get products from the field to the market, so it isn’t easy to know what is causing the recent spikes. You would expect that you would see the market respond by adjusting prices after an increase in fuel prices or a market shock like a lockdown. This didn’t happen until very recently. I found this very odd.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;AI-92 prices increased by &lt;a href=&quot;https://montsame.mn/en/read/269054&quot;&gt;300 MNT per liter&lt;/a&gt; in July 2021, so there could have been a delayed impact. Combined with the Chinese border closure, these events could put more pressure on supply by increasing costs and restricting imports. Economists with more knowledge than me of Mongolia’s market dynamic could probably explain this better than me.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Lastly, I wanted to look at how markets price their products and perhaps see whether they use psychological pricing or not.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;do-markets-use-psychological-pricing&quot;&gt;Do markets use psychological pricing?&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Psychological pricing is when a business uses pricing strategies to either make the customer feel better about the product or make the customer believe it’s cheaper. For example, a product could be priced for 1,999 tugriks instead of 2,000 tugriks.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;There are several psychological pricing strategies, and honestly, I didn’t want to test all of them for every product. One simple test is to count the frequency of prices that end in a certain number of zeros. For example, a price ending in three zeros would be 1,000, 4,000, etc. This tells us the price is an even thousand. We can repeat this test for one zero (‘0), two zeros (‘00), and three zeros (‘000).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Here are the results for three zeros (‘000).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/market_prices/prices_thousands.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;From the chart above, zakhs tend to have prices in the thousands and supermarkets don’t. This intuitively makes a lot of sense, as markets may commonly accept cash, and items are purchased at individual stalls. At supermarkets, items are put into a cart and added up. So the price for an individual product is less noticed at a supermarket than a zakh.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Next, we can look at the frequency of prices ending in two zeros (‘00).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/market_prices/prices_hundreds.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The story here is identical, not much to tell.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Finally, we can look at the frequency of prices ending in one zero (‘0).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/market_prices/prices_tens.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The clear psychological pricing outlier of all supermarkets and zakhs in Ulaanbaatar is Nomin. Imagine a product priced at 1,479 vs 1,400. This doesn’t mean much to the consumer, but it could be a significant revenue boost across many products to the store. If 1,000 products are sold a day with an extra 79 tugriks added, that’s 2.37 million tugriks extra each month across many stores. That can equal a significant revenue difference.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Note that Saruul is lower here just because they didn’t have as many records in our data.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;did-you-change-your-mind&quot;&gt;Did you change your mind?&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;After wrapping up this analysis, I can safely say that my mind wasn’t changed much. I mostly knew that supermarkets were more expensive. One thing I did learn was how similarly priced Emart is compared to other supermarkets on many products. Again, I don’t know if this pricing extends to products outside the sample we have, so this might not hold true in general.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;What about you? Did you learn anything new with this data?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
  &lt;p&gt;If you are interested in seeing the code used to collect or analyze the data for this article, you can find it &lt;a href=&quot;https://deepnote.com/project/UB-Market-Price-Analysis-XCm2UVeZTs-MqI4_J0lh4g/%2FMarket%20Price%20Analysis.ipynb&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;h4 id=&quot;mds-newsletter&quot;&gt;MDS Newsletter&lt;/h4&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Thank you for reading. Mongolian Data Stories has a free newsletter! To receive new articles straight to your inbox so you never miss out, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.getrevue.co/profile/mongoliandatastories&quot;&gt;click here to sign up&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</content><author><name>Robert Ritz</name></author><category term="ulaanbaatar" /><category term="economy" /><category term="prices" /><summary type="html">Since moving to Ulaanbaatar in 2013, I’ve been to nearly every market in the city. I was struck by the opposite worlds of the zakh and the supermarket. One feels bustling but is arguably less convenient (no carts, very little parking). The other is more structured and has more packaged products but is often lacking in the selection of fresh foods. In some ways it’s indicative of the dichotomy that exists in Ulaanbaatar in general between the new and the old, the urban and periurban.</summary><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://mongoliandatastories.com/images/market_prices/market_cover.jpg" /><media:content medium="image" url="https://mongoliandatastories.com/images/market_prices/market_cover.jpg" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" /></entry><entry><title type="html">What happens if you pay people to get married?</title><link href="https://mongoliandatastories.com/Mongolias-marriage-spike" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="What happens if you pay people to get married?" /><published>2021-10-20T00:00:00+08:00</published><updated>2021-10-20T00:00:00+08:00</updated><id>https://mongoliandatastories.com/Mongolias-marriage-spike</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://mongoliandatastories.com/Mongolias-marriage-spike">&lt;p&gt;We often think of marriage as a serious thing. When you marry someone, most people believe that it will be a lifelong commitment. From much research in many countries, we know that there are many benefits to being married, from living longer to lower insurance rates.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Therefore it makes sense that the government, and society, would want to encourage people to get married. So, what if you offered people the equivalent of $500 to get married? Would existing couples “on the fence” decide to take the plunge? Would people in need of quick cash make a sham wedding?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;From 2006-2009, the Mongolian government did precisely this kind of &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.olloo.mn/modules.php?name=News&amp;amp;file=article&amp;amp;sid=30855&quot;&gt;cash giveaway for new marriages&lt;/a&gt;. Any couple registering a new marriage was eligible for this money, equivalent to roughly 4 months the average Mongolian salary from 2006. The results were nothing short of remarkable.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/marriage-spike/total-marriages.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This situation is what social scientists (and economists) call a “natural experiment.” The government increased the incentive to get married, and we can easily see the result.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For the three years, from 2006-2009, the government offered cash to get married. In 2006 there were more than three times the marriages of 2005. For three consecutive years, more than 30,000 marriages were registered per year. No other year on record recorded so many marriages.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Economists are probably more interested in how the new incentive changed individuals’ decisions to get married. Social scientists might want to know how the institution of marriage changed, the impact on births, etc.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We can also break these marriages down by age group to see who decided to tie the knot.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/marriage-spike/marriages-by-age-group.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Those 20-29 took the government money at the highest rate, with the 30-39 age group following them. If we look at growth rate, both age groups more than doubled their marriage rates. Notably, the 18-19 year-old group didn’t move much.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This government program has even spawned movie plot points in the Mongolian movie industry. The movie “Хуримын сюрприз” (Marriage Surprise) from 2015 is about a man wishing to marry the woman he loves, only to remember that he married his friend in college for the money. If you want to watch the trailer check it out &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0btMIbgZYk&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. It’s unclear if this is based on a true story (I’m joking obviously).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;take-the-money-and-run&quot;&gt;Take the Money and Run&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As a socially minded data scientist, I’m more interested in how this large increase in marriages may impacted divorce. I immediately thought that a few years later divorces would spike while the people in it for the money decided to get out of their fake marriages.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Let’s take a look at the time series of divorces from 1988-2020.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/marriage-spike/total-divorces.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This looks pretty terrible right? Beginning in 2005 divorces increased steadily. This chart alone probably reinforces the belief of many that a steady rise in divorces has been a negative symptom in society for the past decade. After all, a rise in divorces might mean more children growing up &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bbc.com/news/education-47057787&quot;&gt;without two parents&lt;/a&gt;, more single men who are more likely to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.fatherly.com/health-science/are-fathers-less-likely-to-commit-crimes-biological/&quot;&gt;commit crimes&lt;/a&gt;, and a general erosion of a cornerstone of society.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As usual though, let’s dig deeper to figure out what is driving this trend. Luckily the &lt;a href=&quot;https://1212.mn&quot;&gt;National Statistics Office&lt;/a&gt; breaks down divorce by duration of marriage. Let’s take a look.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/marriage-spike/divorces-by-duration.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The main trend driving the increasing numbers of divorces seems to be marriages lasting longer than 10 years. Across all marriage duration categories divorces went down in 2020. Whether due to the pandemic or another issue isn’t clear.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Also notable are the smaller spikes we see for shorter duration marriages. I started getting suspicious seeing these spikes. They seemed to be staggered by duration. The 1-3 year duration divorces spike first, then the 4-6 year duration, and finally the 7-9 year duration. Coincidence? I think not.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To make things clear I highlighted the portions of each line where marriages would have happened from 2006-2009. This way we can see if divorces might have spiked because of the cash giveaway or some other trend.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/marriage-spike/divorces-duration-highlighted.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It’s pretty astonishing how clear these spikes are. I find it nearly impossible to find another explanation for these divorce spikes. Clearly, this government program was responsible for a good portion, if not most, of the increase in divorces in the past 2 decades. Unfortunately, we don’t have data on the reason for divorce. Although I doubt any survey would include “we got married for the money” as the cause of divorce.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To extend this line of thinking further, we can relatively clearly see how divorces would not be nearly as high without these spikes. It’s reasonable to assume that annual divorces might be between 2,500 to 3,000 instead of more than 4,000 (a 25-35% decrease). Luckily divorces appear to be normalizing to the trend seen before the spikes.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;conclusion&quot;&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As experiments go, the results are clear. If you pay people to get married, they will. Only years later they may get divorced, causing mayhem for statistics and making your grandparents believe that society isn’t what it used to be.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Each year there are between 10,000 to 20,000 marriages, and more recently, roughly 3,000 to 4,000 divorces. In the next few years, I expect that divorces will level out or even fall.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Whether this program was a mistake isn’t clear. The government intended to support marriage with this initiative. This seems to be a lesson to be careful what you wish for.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
  &lt;p&gt;If you are interested in seeing the code used to collect or analyze the data for this article, you can find it &lt;a href=&quot;https://deepnote.com/project/Mongolias-Marriage-Spike-gOC28BVLSSyLCqzXDgpd-Q/%2FMarriage%20Spike.ipynb&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;h4 id=&quot;mds-newsletter&quot;&gt;MDS Newsletter&lt;/h4&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Thank you for reading. Mongolian Data Stories has a free newsletter! To receive new articles straight to your inbox so you never miss out, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.getrevue.co/profile/mongoliandatastories&quot;&gt;click here to sign up&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</content><author><name>Robert Ritz</name></author><category term="marriage" /><category term="government" /><summary type="html">We often think of marriage as a serious thing. When you marry someone, most people believe that it will be a lifelong commitment. From much research in many countries, we know that there are many benefits to being married, from living longer to lower insurance rates.</summary><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://mongoliandatastories.com/images/marriage-spike/cover.jpg" /><media:content medium="image" url="https://mongoliandatastories.com/images/marriage-spike/cover.jpg" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" /></entry><entry><title type="html">The rent is too darn high. Right?</title><link href="https://mongoliandatastories.com/Apartment-Price-Income-Ratio" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="The rent is too darn high. Right?" /><published>2021-10-07T00:00:00+08:00</published><updated>2021-10-07T00:00:00+08:00</updated><id>https://mongoliandatastories.com/Apartment-Price-Income-Ratio</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://mongoliandatastories.com/Apartment-Price-Income-Ratio">&lt;p&gt;It’s hard to think of something more at the core of society than the family dwelling. It’s where you hang your hat, put your family possessions, and spend time with the ones you are closest to. For many families in Ulaanbaatar, this means an apartment in a multi-level building.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As children grow up, get married, and have children of their own (but not always in that order), families often scrape together enough money to purchase an apartment for the budding young family to start their lives together. It sounds quite idylic, something akin to a “Mongolian Dream”, rivaling the American one.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It’s easy to argue that this Mongolian Dream is a false one, propped up by a highly profitable construction sector, but that’s not what I’m here to do. I’m here to answer a Tweet. That’s right, a Tweet. Perhaps you get motivated by lofty ideals or a sense of justice. I tend to pay attention to Twitter too much.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote class=&quot;twitter-tweet&quot;&gt;&lt;p lang=&quot;en&quot; dir=&quot;ltr&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/RobertERitz?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&quot;&gt;@RobertERitz&lt;/a&gt; do you want to take a crack at this? Median income is with NSO, average flat price index is with &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/TenkhlegZuuch?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&quot;&gt;@TenkhlegZuuch&lt;/a&gt; and MIK group company&lt;/p&gt;&amp;mdash; Эрдэнийн ЛХАГВА (@Lkhagva) &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/Lkhagva/status/1441303059829649415?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&quot;&gt;September 24, 2021&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
&lt;script async=&quot;&quot; src=&quot;https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js&quot; charset=&quot;utf-8&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Following the Evergrande debt crisis, Bloomberg published an &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-09-22/china-s-evergrande-debt-crisis-is-stress-test-no-one-wanted&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; showing the price to income ratio for various Chinese cities compared to well known cities around the world. I was asked to take on this chart and see how Ulaanbaatar stacks up with the rest of the world.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;First let’s define how the price to income ratio was created. The data for this chart came from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings.jsp?title=2021-mid&amp;amp;displayColumn=0&quot;&gt;Numbeo&lt;/a&gt;, a living costs data aggregator. Numbeo uses a simple formula consisting of the ratio of average price per square meter and average salary. They assume an apartment size of 90 square meters and they take 1.5 times the average annual net salary as a measure of net disposable family income. This 1.5 number assumes an average of 2 earners in a family with 50% of the women participating in the workforce.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/apartment-price-income-ratio/pricetoincomeratio.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;These assumptions might not apply well to Mongolia, but we can address these later. By having a consistent methodology we can compare all of these countries on housing affordability. Conveniently, Numbeo actually does calculate the price to income ratio for Ulaanbaatar. All put together, here is the chart from mid-2021.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/apartment-price-income-ratio/homeprice_income_ratio_numbeo.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Being towards the bottom of the chart, Ulaanbaatar does not look too bad next to the ultra expensive cities in China. But look at the two cities Ulaanbaatar is more expensive than in this list. New York and San Francisco!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;siri-recalculate-that-for-me&quot;&gt;Siri, recalculate that for me&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Let’s take a step back. How sure are we that these numbers are accurate? Using local and reliable data sources, I wanted to calculate the price to income ratio to verify that the result from Numbeo is accurate.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Digging around for data, there are a few issues with the price to income ratio as calculated by Numbeo. First, it is not clear whether Numbeo is using average or median salary in its calculation. In Mongolia the median salary is substantially less than the average salary.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/apartment-price-income-ratio/salary_median_wages.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This is due to a small number of high earners skewing the average higher while the median (or middle) salary is lower. While average salary data are available for both Ulaanbaatar and the national level, data for median salary are only available at the national level from the National Statistics Office of Mongolia.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It is also important to note that generally when a median is much smaller than an average, the mode (the most common observation) is generally even smaller than the median. Given these facts we probably should not consider the statistically average Mongolian to actually be very average at all.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The second issue is related to the price per square meter of housing. In countries like the United States the average price of housing would include apartments for purchase, smaller multi-family dwellings, and single family units. In Ulaanbaatar, when the price of housing is discussed it almost always refers to the price of apartments, not single family units. Yet 50% or more of the population of Ulaanbaatar does not live in apartments. So any ratio we make with the available data would be limited in scope to apartments and not the full spectrum of housing available in Ulaanbaatar.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;With these issues in mind we can calculate a price to income ratio using available data. I used the same formula as Numbeo to keep things consistent.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Average Ulaanbaatar salary for Q2 2021 via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.1212.mn/tables.aspx?tbl_id=dt_nso_0400_021v1&amp;amp;soum_select_all=0&amp;amp;soumsingleselect=_511_0&amp;amp;gender_select_all=0&amp;amp;gendersingleselect=_1&amp;amp;yearq_select_all=1&amp;amp;yearqsingleselect=&amp;amp;yeary_select_all=0&amp;amp;yearysingleselect=&amp;amp;viewtype=linechart&quot;&gt;1212.mn&lt;/a&gt;: ₮1,433,100&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Average price per square meter of apartments for Q2 2021 in Ulaanbaatar via Doljoo from Tenkhleg Zuuch on &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/Shoot91/status/1441313879271772163?s=20&quot;&gt;Twitter&lt;/a&gt;: ₮2,647,076&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;10% Income Tax + 13.5% Social Insurance = Tax rate of 23.5%&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Putting it all together we can take the average price per square meter multiplied by 90 square meters to get the average price of an apartment. Then we take the monthly net salary (average salary minus taxes) and multiply it by 12 months. Then multiply by 1.5 to get the estimated family income. All together:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/apartment-price-income-ratio/price_income_ratio_average_90.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The result? 12.07. This is a bit above the Numbeo ratio, but not by much. We should consider their number reasonably accurate given the issues we outlined above. Put simply, the “average” Mongolian family, which isn’t actually very average, will pay more for an apartment in relation to income than an average family in New York or San Francisco.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;90-square-meters-you-rich-bro&quot;&gt;90 Square Meters? You rich bro?&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;If you keep up with things in Mongolia, you will know there is also an issue with using the assumed 90 square meters for an apartment. First, the government mortgage program allows a maximum size of 80 square meters. Second, a 90 square meter apartment is considered to be on the larger side for many in Ulaanbaatar.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To address these issues I decided to take another pass at the price to income ratio using more realistic numbers for Ulaanbaatar. Here are the data assumptions I used.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Median salary, national level, Q2 2021, via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.1212.mn/tables.aspx?tbl_id=DT_NSO_0400_069V2&amp;amp;SALARY_INDEX_select_all=0&amp;amp;SALARY_INDEXSingleSelect=_1&amp;amp;YearQ_select_all=1&amp;amp;YearQSingleSelect=&amp;amp;YearY_select_all=0&amp;amp;YearYSingleSelect=&amp;amp;viewtype=linechart&quot;&gt;1212.mn&lt;/a&gt;: ₮993,600&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;The same average price per square meter for apartments, Q2 2021: ₮2,647,076&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;10% Income Tax + 13.5% Social Insurance = Tax rate of 23.5%&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Average apartment size: 62 square meters
    &lt;ul&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Tenkhleg Zuuch currently &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/Shoot91/status/1441320770391535620?s=20&quot;&gt;considers&lt;/a&gt; this the median apartment size in Ulaanbaatar.&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;/ul&gt;
  &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/apartment-price-income-ratio/price_income_ratio_median_62.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The result? 11.99. Nearly identical to the ratio calculated above with average salary and 90 square meters. We can’t directly make a comparison now to New York or San Francisco like we did before. What we can do is draw a general conclusion about apartment affordability for a middle income family for a median sized apartment.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Note: You might think we could simply take the ratio from New York and multiply it by 1.3 (because 62 square meters is about 30% less than 90 square meters). Without knowing whether Numbeo used median or average salary in all circumstances it’s hard to know if we can make a generalized estimate like that.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;But what comes next might be more useful.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;zoom-in-enhance&quot;&gt;Zoom in, enhance!&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;After doing the above calculations I felt that I still had not gotten the full context of the situation. I realized what we needed was a look at the trend of the price to income ratio. In other words, have apartments gotten cheaper or more expensive relative to wages over the past several years?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Luckily I had apartment price data and wage data from 2014-2021. Here are the data assumptions I used to gereate the chart:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Yearly net salary = Average salary (national level) x (1 - tax rate) x 12&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Average apartment price = Average price per square meter in Ulaanbaatar x 62 square meters&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Price to income ratio = Average apartment price / Yearly net salary&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/apartment-price-income-ratio/price_income_ratio.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I was fairly shocked by the result. I always heard that families are being priced out of apartments, but this chart tells a different story. In the past 10 years apartments have become more affordable to both average and middle income families. Since around 2019 the trend has leveled off, with salaries and apartment prices rising at a similar rate.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This seems to signal that more recently supply and demand has reached some sort of balance, with the supply of apartments matching the demand in the market.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Does this mean that apartments are “easy” to afford for families? That’s a tougher question that leads us into mortgage territory and the unique properties of the lending market in Mongolia.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We can leave that for another day.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;h4 id=&quot;mds-newsletter&quot;&gt;MDS Newsletter&lt;/h4&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Thank you for reading. Mongolian Data Stories has a free newsletter! To receive new articles straight to your inbox so you never miss out, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.getrevue.co/profile/mongoliandatastories&quot;&gt;click here to sign up&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</content><author><name>Robert Ritz</name></author><category term="apartments" /><category term="housing" /><category term="salary" /><category term="economy" /><summary type="html">It’s hard to think of something more at the core of society than the family dwelling. It’s where you hang your hat, put your family possessions, and spend time with the ones you are closest to. For many families in Ulaanbaatar, this means an apartment in a multi-level building.</summary><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://mongoliandatastories.com/images/apartment-price-income-ratio/apartment-skyline.jpg" /><media:content medium="image" url="https://mongoliandatastories.com/images/apartment-price-income-ratio/apartment-skyline.jpg" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" /></entry><entry><title type="html">Mongolia is running on fumes</title><link href="https://mongoliandatastories.com/Mongolias-fuel-shortage" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Mongolia is running on fumes" /><published>2021-09-21T00:00:00+08:00</published><updated>2021-09-21T00:00:00+08:00</updated><id>https://mongoliandatastories.com/Mongolias-fuel-shortage</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://mongoliandatastories.com/Mongolias-fuel-shortage">&lt;p&gt;Just yesterday I learned that there has been a gasoline “shortage” for a few weeks in Mongolia. I put shortage in quotation marks because it seems the government and average citizens did not immediately agree on the reality of the situation.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;On September 14, 2021,  the Mineral Resources and Petroleum Authority of Mongolia  made a &lt;a href=&quot;https://montsame.mn/mn/read/275097&quot;&gt;statement&lt;/a&gt; via the state news agency Montsame unequivocaly stating that there is no shortage of gasoline. This is heavily contrasted by reports on social media of limitations on purchases or outages at some stations.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote class=&quot;twitter-tweet&quot;&gt;&lt;p lang=&quot;ru&quot; dir=&quot;ltr&quot;&gt;Хил гааль дээр хэдэн сараар гацсан бараа таваараа татаж чадахгүй, хэдэн колониуд нь бензиний нөөцөө барсан, ковидоор өвдсөн хүмүүст нь эмнэлэг олдохгүй, дарга эрх мэдэлтнүүд нь эзгүй.... бид дижитал үндэстэн &lt;a href=&quot;https://t.co/2xxAd3ha80&quot;&gt;pic.twitter.com/2xxAd3ha80&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&amp;mdash; Seku (@ganaasel) &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/ganaasel/status/1440021463935840257?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&quot;&gt;September 20, 2021&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
&lt;script async=&quot;&quot; src=&quot;https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js&quot; charset=&quot;utf-8&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So what is the actual situation currently in Mongolia? As usual, I like to go to the actual data to see what the reality is.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;fuel-reserves&quot;&gt;Fuel Reserves&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The Mineral Resources and Petroleum Authority of Mongolia (MRPAM) reports fuel reserves on a monthly basis, and has these reports going back to 2015. Unfortunately the reports are in PDF form, requiring a bit of copy pasting on my part to collect the last two years of data.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/fuel-shortage/92-supply.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We can see that the reserves of AI-92 fuel as of June 2021 are nearly 35% less than June 2020. It is also clear that during the fall reserves are reduced, most likely due to increased vehicle usage as people return to work from their summer vacations.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As far as I can determine the government has not said anything definitive about when  imports of AI-92 slowed or stopped. The government did &lt;a href=&quot;https://montsame.mn/mn/read/275719&quot;&gt;release some information&lt;/a&gt; about further dwindling reserves today (September 21, 2021), stating the central region has 4 days of fuel remaining. Other than a mention that no AI-92 fuel will be imported in September, it is not clear what the current import situation is.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Note: I chose to visualize AI-92 fuel as it is the most common fuel used in passenger vehicles in Mongolia. It is also the type of fuel nearly everyone is complaining about shortages of.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h4 id=&quot;reporting-irregularity&quot;&gt;Reporting Irregularity&lt;/h4&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Typically, the MRPAM posts the reserve statistics one month delayed, but it seems this year they have neglected to post any reserve statistics since July 22nd. By now we should be able to expect the reserve numbers for July and August to have been posted. As of the time of publishing, the government still has not released reserve or import statistics for July or August 2021.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In addition, an irregularity in the reporting popped up as I was going through these monthly reports. On all monthly reports, the MRPAM shows a yearly comparison on the fuel reserve chart, for example showing January 2021 vs January 2020. This allows the report reader to see how the reserves land year over year. This is a good comparison as consumer behavior follows a yearly pattern.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The latest report for June 2021 made a departure from this. Instead of showing a year over year comparison they compared June 2021 vs May 2021. This made the numbers look better on the chart, and conveniently hid the nearly 35% reduction in reserves year over year. The screenshot below from &lt;a href=&quot;https://mrpam.gov.mn/public/pages/169/2021.06.stat.report.mon.pdf&quot;&gt;Page 25 of the June 2021 report&lt;/a&gt; shows this departure from the usual practice.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/fuel-shortage/page25.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;fuel-reserve-projection&quot;&gt;Fuel Reserve Projection&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Given today’s announcement by the government, we know that the central region of Mongolia has only 4-5 days of fuel remaining. Nevertheless, it may be useful to understand how a fuel reserve projection could be made given imports, reserve numbers, and inferred usage.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;MRPAM releases import numbers by fuel type alongside the reserve numbers.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/fuel-shortage/import-table.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A few minutes of copy pasting later I was able to create a nice table with reserves and imports for AI-92. I then took the previous months reserves, added it to the current months imports, and subtracted the current months reserves. This should give us a reasonable estimate of actual usage of AI-92 during that month.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/fuel-shortage/est_usage.svg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We can also determine the available reserves at the end of the month given a very similar formula.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/fuel-shortage/est_reserve.svg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To extrapolate forward I looked at several different import scenarios where the imports are a &lt;em&gt;percentage of the values from 2020&lt;/em&gt;. We will forecast forward using 75%, 85%, and 95% of the import levels from July 2020 to December 2020. We will assume the same level of fuel usage from July 2020 to December 2020.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Stepping forward each month we can do the process listed above and get a projection of AI-92 reserves at the end of each month for each of these scenarios. Keep in mind the projection below assumes 2020 levels of consumption and are based on a percentage of imports from the corresponding month in 2020.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/fuel-shortage/projected-92-reserves.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;At 85% of 2020 imports we see reserves emptying in September. At 95% reserves go negative in October and rise again positive in November. Only at 100% of 2020 import levels do the reserves stay above 0. The already lowered reserves from late summer seem to be exacerbating the current import issues.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It is very clear that without imports equal to or larger than 2020 Mongolia’s AI-92 fuel reserve will continue to be near zero for a few months. Of course these projections aren’t a guarantee of what will happen. They are merely scenarios based on past data that we can use to better understand the current situation. I hope you find them useful.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;hiding-risk&quot;&gt;Hiding Risk&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;It seems fairly clear from the analysis above that the current shortage of fuel could have been seen as early as July/August this year. Reserves were so far off their usual level that it was a clear signal of risk. Of course this was a sensitive time politically as back to school preparations began. The government seemed to clearly be trying to exhibit a sense of stability and preparation ahead of the usual fall rush in the city and around the country.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It is important to remember that in December 2020 Mongolia had a &lt;a href=&quot;https://mongoliandatastories.com/Australias-loss-Mongolias-gain-coal&quot;&gt;large opportunity&lt;/a&gt; to significantly increase coal exports to China. China recently banned the import of coal from Australia, giving Mongolia an obvious advantage. Due to COVID-19 outbreaks and customs issues, Mongolia seems to have squandered that opportunity.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;You can find the code, data, and Excel spreadsheet for the projections above on the site Github page &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/robertritz/mongoliandatastories/tree/main/notebooks/Fuel-Shortage&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;h4 id=&quot;mds-newsletter&quot;&gt;MDS Newsletter&lt;/h4&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Thank you for reading. Mongolian Data Stories has a free newsletter! To receive new articles straight to your inbox so you never miss out, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.getrevue.co/profile/mongoliandatastories&quot;&gt;click here to sign up&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</content><author><name>Robert Ritz</name></author><category term="import" /><category term="economy" /><category term="fuel" /><category term="gasoline" /><summary type="html">Just yesterday I learned that there has been a gasoline “shortage” for a few weeks in Mongolia. I put shortage in quotation marks because it seems the government and average citizens did not immediately agree on the reality of the situation.</summary><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://mongoliandatastories.com/images/fuel-shortage/cover.jpg" /><media:content medium="image" url="https://mongoliandatastories.com/images/fuel-shortage/cover.jpg" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" /></entry><entry><title type="html">Mongolia’s $150,000 license plate</title><link href="https://mongoliandatastories.com/Mongolias-150-000-License-Plate" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Mongolia’s $150,000 license plate" /><published>2021-02-15T00:00:00+08:00</published><updated>2021-02-15T00:00:00+08:00</updated><id>https://mongoliandatastories.com/Mongolias-150-000-License-Plate</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://mongoliandatastories.com/Mongolias-150-000-License-Plate">&lt;h4 id=&quot;would-you-pay-this-much-for-the-countrys-best-licenseplate&quot;&gt;Would you pay this much for the country’s “best” license plate?&lt;/h4&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL:DR&lt;/strong&gt; Mongolia auctions off a “lucky number” license plate and the bids reach 427.45 million MNT (Mongolian Tugriks) in &lt;strong&gt;less than three hours&lt;/strong&gt;. That’s $150,035.10 USD at current exchange rates.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Numbers mean a lot to most Mongolians. Generally, 1, 3, 8, and 9 are considered “lucky” numbers. Mongolian phone numbers have 8 digits, and the first 4 of these numbers can tell you a lot about who is calling you. So-called “lucky” phone numbers beginning with 99 or 88 regularly sell for anywhere from $1,000 (9999-XXXX) up to $20,000 or more for the most elite (9911-XXXX). These phone numbers are sold on the “secondary market” from person to person. If a 9911-XXXX number calls you and you don’t answer, expect them to be upset…&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, license plate numbers are assigned to a vehicle and can’t be transferred between individuals. In addition, up until recently, you couldn’t pay for a better license plate number. This caused a situation where the “best” license plates (think 0001-УБА) &lt;em&gt;somehow&lt;/em&gt; ended up on Mercedes G-Wagon’s and Land Cruisers. I wonder how that happened?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/mongolias-150000-license-plate/g-wagon.jpeg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;The G-Wagon. &lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mercedes-Benz_G_63_AMG_2012.JPG&quot;&gt;Source: Wikimedia Commons&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The general public always knew what was really happening. At one point frustration was so high that there was discussion of giving these lucky numbers to garbage trucks or other city vehicles. It seems their voice was heard when the new &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.legalinfo.mn/annex/details/11395?lawid=15748&quot;&gt;Motor Vehicle Registration Country Number Procedure&lt;/a&gt; was approved in late 2020. This procedure set up a system to allow “lucky” numbers to be auctioned on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://Vehicle%20registration%20department&quot;&gt;Vehicle Registration Department’s website&lt;/a&gt;. This has been generally viewed as a positive development, as those willing to pay for this special license plate could pay legally for the privilege and contribute to government revenue and social programs.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I’m not sure anyone expected what happened next. On February 15, 2021, the number 0001-УАР had its day to be auctioned. The first bid was 1,000,000 MNT (approximately $350 USD). Let’s see what happened…&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/mongolias-150000-license-plate/chart.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Cumulative bids for various license plates on February 15, 2021. Source: Author&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The auction opened at 9:00AM. In less than 30 minutes bids for 0001-УАР reached the equivalent of $100,000. By 11:30AM the auction total reached 427.45 million MNT (Mongolian Tugriks). &lt;strong&gt;That’s $150,035.10 USD at current exchange rates.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div style=&quot;width:100%;height:0;padding-bottom:56%;position:relative;&quot;&gt;&lt;iframe src=&quot;https://giphy.com/embed/ToMjGpjpXMFPshSYGLm&quot; width=&quot;100%&quot; height=&quot;100%&quot; style=&quot;position:absolute&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; class=&quot;giphy-embed&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://giphy.com/gifs/editingandlayout-anchorman-that-escalated-quickly-ToMjGpjpXMFPshSYGLm&quot;&gt;via GIPHY&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Anyone bidding on a license plate number is required to put in a deposit for their bid of 50,000 MNT (about $17 USD). There were 957 bids for 0001-УАР. Those who didn’t win the auction will have their deposits returned. The winning bid is now expected to pay the total amount. If they don’t pay or are unable to, this number will go up for auction again.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It’s unclear how much of this auction was real interest or social media hype, as this particular license plate went somewhat viral on various Mongolian language Facebook groups. To put things in perspective, the average yearly salary in Ulaanbaatar, the capital, is about $5,300 USD.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;What do you think? Is a $150,000 license plate worth it?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;h4 id=&quot;mds-newsletter&quot;&gt;MDS Newsletter&lt;/h4&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Thank you for reading. Mongolian Data Stories has a free newsletter! To receive new articles straight to your inbox so you never miss out, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.getrevue.co/profile/mongoliandatastories&quot;&gt;click here to sign up&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</content><author><name>Robert Ritz</name></author><category term="lucky-numbers" /><summary type="html">Would you pay this much for the country’s “best” license plate?</summary><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://mongoliandatastories.com/images/mongolias-150000-license-plate/cover.png" /><media:content medium="image" url="https://mongoliandatastories.com/images/mongolias-150000-license-plate/cover.png" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" /></entry><entry><title type="html">Is Australia’s Loss Mongolia’s Gain?</title><link href="https://mongoliandatastories.com/Australias-loss-Mongolias-gain-coal" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Is Australia’s Loss Mongolia’s Gain?" /><published>2020-12-18T00:00:00+08:00</published><updated>2020-12-18T00:00:00+08:00</updated><id>https://mongoliandatastories.com/Australias-loss-Mongolias-gain-coal</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://mongoliandatastories.com/Australias-loss-Mongolias-gain-coal">&lt;p&gt;Note: This article originally appeared on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mongoliaweekly.org/post/is-australia-s-loss-mongolia-s-gain&quot;&gt;Mongolia Weekly&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Typically, towards the end of each year China’s coal imports decline, only to restart with vigor early the next year. Argus media, a media organization focused on commodities, say that this slowdown, officially blamed on customs clearance issues, has happened for &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/2064083-chinese-coking-coal-imports-rise-by-153pc-in-2019?mc_cid=1f9728d1ea&amp;amp;mc_eid=723326a57c&quot;&gt;the past two years&lt;/a&gt;. Of course, this official explanation has shown a remarkable regularity at the end of the year when China has mostly satisfied its domestic need for coal. In both 2018 and 2019 around November, a line of coal trucks &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.mn/en/789843/?mc_cid=113b6a9ec2&amp;amp;mc_eid=723326a57c&quot;&gt;kilometers long&lt;/a&gt; would sit at Mongolia’s southern border with China in below freezing temperatures waiting to be processed.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As early as November, New Hope, and Australian coal miner, said they believed Australian coal imports were simply being &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.afr.com/companies/mining/new-hope-says-china-shifting-coal-shipments-to-january-20201117-p56fdx&quot;&gt;delayed until January&lt;/a&gt;. Yet this year seems to be different. The recent trade spat between China and Australia has resulted in China eliminating clearance restrictions from several countries, except for Australia.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/australias-loss-mongolias-gain/two-big-players.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Since July, Mongolia’s coal export has been ramping up and trying to make up ground that it lost due to coal exports dipping to near zero in March. Mongolia’s Finance Ministry stated in 2019 that mining revenues made up &lt;a href=&quot;http://bloombergtv.mn/%D1%82%D3%A9%D1%81%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B9%D0%BD-%D0%B7%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B3%D1%8B%D0%BD-%D3%A9%D1%81%D3%A9%D0%BB%D1%82-%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B3%D1%8B%D0%BD-%D3%A9%D1%81%D3%A9%D0%BB%D1%82%D3%A9%D3%A9%D1%81-4-%D0%BF%D1%83%D0%BD%D0%BA%D1%82%D1%8D%D1%8D%D1%80-%D3%A9%D0%BD%D0%B4%D3%A9%D1%80-%D0%B1%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BD%D0%B0/?cid=3&quot;&gt;27% of the state budget&lt;/a&gt;. In addition, prior to just a few days ago Mongolia might have been looking at a hard slowdown of customs clearance for coal exports at the border in November. This race to the finish has not been kind, with total mineral products exports down $10.7 billion USD at the end of November, year over year, according to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://1212.mn&quot;&gt;National Statistical Office&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;While the spat between Australia and China would seen to be an opportunity for Mongolia, it is important to keep in mind the type of coal that Mongolia predominantly exports to China. Since 2019, 85% of Mongolia’s coal export to China has been coking coal, which is used in blast furnaces as part of the steel production process. During the same period, only 42% of Australia’s export to China is coking coal, with a large portion of the rest being used for thermal coal to generate electricity and heat.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, for the past few years Mongolia has been running up against China’s de facto coal quotas. With Australia sidelined, Mongolia has a significant opportunity to ramp up coking coal exports.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/australias-loss-mongolias-gain/australia-loss.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In 2019 Mongolia’s share of coking coal exports hovered around 50% of China’s total import. In 2020 Australia filled the gap left by Mongolia and in March accounted for nearly 80% of China’s coking coal imports. Now it is Mongolia’s turn to fill the gap. If Australian coal imports remain stranded at sea, Mongolia could increase coking coal exports significantly in the near term.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Challenges remain for Mongolia. Currently coal is still trucked to China, and the under construction Tavan-Tolgoi Gashuunsukhait railroad is scheduled to be &lt;a href=&quot;https://montsame.mn/en/read/231951&quot;&gt;completed in 2022&lt;/a&gt;. This railroad will improve margins by reducing transportation costs and speed customs clearance, which will result in higher revenues and increase export ability. Until then, the main bottleneck is still customs clearance with China.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The recently opened “green channel”, which optimizes clearance of cross-border freight and related personnel, has been said to help. Yet due to the recent outbreak of COVID-19 in Mongolia, China insisted truck drivers entering the country be tested before being allowed to cross the border. Currently there is a big opportunity in front of Mongolia, and we will see early in 2021 if it can take advantage of it.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;h4 id=&quot;mds-newsletter&quot;&gt;MDS Newsletter&lt;/h4&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Thank you for reading. Mongolian Data Stories has a free newsletter! To receive new articles straight to your inbox so you never miss out, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.getrevue.co/profile/mongoliandatastories&quot;&gt;click here to sign up&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</content><author><name>Robert Ritz</name></author><category term="coal" /><category term="export" /><summary type="html">Note: This article originally appeared on Mongolia Weekly.</summary><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://mongoliandatastories.com/images/australias-loss-mongolias-gain/article-cover.png" /><media:content medium="image" url="https://mongoliandatastories.com/images/australias-loss-mongolias-gain/article-cover.png" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" /></entry><entry><title type="html">Sqair Air Purifier Real World Test</title><link href="https://mongoliandatastories.com/Sqair-real-world-test" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Sqair Air Purifier Real World Test" /><published>2019-09-18T00:00:00+08:00</published><updated>2019-09-18T00:00:00+08:00</updated><id>https://mongoliandatastories.com/Sqair-real-world-test</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://mongoliandatastories.com/Sqair-real-world-test">&lt;h4 id=&quot;i-put-the-new-sqair-air-purifier-from-smart-air-to-the-test-in-a-controlled-experiment&quot;&gt;I put the new Sqair air purifier from Smart Air to the test in a controlled experiment&lt;/h4&gt;

&lt;h4 id=&quot;note-i-was-loaned-a-test-unit-and-i-did-not-receive-any-payment-or-renumeration-from-smart-air-for-this-article&quot;&gt;Note: I was loaned a test unit, and I did not receive any payment or renumeration from Smart Air for this article.&lt;/h4&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Winter is coming, and we know what that means in Ulaanbaatar. Extremely high levels of air pollution. Even with the recent &lt;a href=&quot;https://montsame.mn/en/read/189503&quot;&gt;ban on the burning of raw coal&lt;/a&gt; it is possible (even likely) that levels of the particularly dangerous pollutant PM2.5 will remain high during the winter months.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;During these months a pollution mask and air purifier are essential equipment to protect yourself and your family. Air purifiers can cost anywhere from $150-$500 or more. This means many families choose to forgo air purifiers completely, at the cost of their entire families health. Smart Air, a social enterprise founded in 2013, wants to change this situation with the launch of their new no-nonsense air purifier, the Sqair. Funded through a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/smartair/the-sqair-the-worlds-most-cost-effective-air-purifier/description&quot;&gt;Kickstarter campaign&lt;/a&gt; in June, the Sqair purports to be the world’s most cost effective air purifier.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/sqair-real-world-test/top.jpeg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;
*Top view of the Sqair. Simple rotating controls.**&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/sqair-real-world-test/left.jpeg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;The Sqair in our small 10m² test room.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Sqair was kind enough to lend me a unit for a few days to test it out. I’ll first give my general thoughts on the device and then present my experiment to show how effective the Sqair is at removing PM2.5 from a room.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I was very pleased with the look of the device as it didn’t stick out as much as other air purifiers (the IQ Air purifier looks like an industrial battery). The controls are dead simple with three options: off, 1, 2, and 3. &lt;em&gt;Fan speed 1&lt;/em&gt; is very quiet (like very quiet). &lt;em&gt;Fan speed 2&lt;/em&gt; is certainly audible even in a room with a little background noise, but it easily blends in. &lt;em&gt;Fan speed 3&lt;/em&gt; is downright noisy, but as you will see below there isn’t much need to use this speed unless you are looking to really move some air through the machine.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3 id=&quot;the-experiment&quot;&gt;The Experiment&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;One thing I really wanted to test was how effective the Sqair is at clearing pollution from a room. I’ve heard criticism about air purifiers from several people who are skeptical of how well they circulate air. The common question is, “How do I know it isn’t just cleaning the air in one corner of the room?”. So I set up an experiment to see how well the Sqair works.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;At my school we have a quiet study room that is 10m² and has ceilings of 3 meters. That makes 30 cubic meters of air in the room. The room has a door that seals completely and has no air vents. This made the perfect room to conduct an experiment with an air purifier. The only problem is that in early September there is essentially no air pollution outside, and inside PM2.5 levels hover around 5 µg/m³. So I had to get creative and make some air pollution.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/sqair-real-world-test/camera-sensor.jpeg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Timelapse camera pointing at a laser PM2.5 sensor.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/sqair-real-world-test/pollution-source.jpeg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Artificial pollution source (арц).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In Mongolia арц (ground Juniper leaf) is commonly burned for religious purposes. It turns out it also is a great source of PM2.5! I poured a few grams of the green powder in a cup and lit it up. The sensor I was using maxes out around 1,500 µg/m³, and after only a few minutes of burning it reached the max! Keep in mind that air is considered “good” by the US EPA if the PM2.5 level is below an average of 12 µg/m³ over 24 hours (the Mongolian standard states that the air is clean below an average of 50 µg/m³ over 24 hours)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I used the following process to run the experiment:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;The air purifier and air quality sensor were placed on opposite sides of the room.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Burn the арц for a few minutes until the PM2.5 level spikes.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Set the air purifier to a speed.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Wait for 90 minutes while the camera records a timelapse of the air quality sensor.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;I also ran a separate test with the air purifier off for 90 minutes to set a baseline.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The results were quite amazing! It’s one thing to know that your air purifier is keeping your air clean, it’s another to see it working in real-time. Let’s take a look at the results:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/sqair-real-world-test/chart.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Before running the test I was quite concerned that the very very quite speed 1 wouldn’t circulate the air enough to clean the room’s air. It turns out that even on fan speed 1 the air was being cleaned at a very steady rate.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;During the fan speed 2 test, it seemed the air was moving around quite a bit more, and for a brief time, the PM2.5 levels went down and then up again. The fan speed 3 test was almost comical in how quickly the air was cleaned. I actually ended it early because I saw no use in continuing it after 60 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Overall the results were what I expected for speeds 2, and 3, but better than expected for speed 1. In a larger room, fan speed 1 &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; not circulate air enough to clean it well. However, this will depend greatly on the room and I couldn’t give a definitive answer based on my test.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h4 id=&quot;conclusion&quot;&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h4&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I was quite impressed with the simplicity, effectiveness, and cost of the Sqair. It just works and it does so while looking good and not breaking the bank. I can easily recommend these air purifiers to anyone looking for a simple and cost-effective solution.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you are interested in buying a Sqair or learning more about Smart Air check out their website &lt;a href=&quot;https://smartairfilters.com/mn/en/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;h4 id=&quot;mds-newsletter&quot;&gt;MDS Newsletter&lt;/h4&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Thank you for reading. Mongolian Data Stories has a free newsletter! To receive new articles straight to your inbox so you never miss out, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.getrevue.co/profile/mongoliandatastories&quot;&gt;click here to sign up&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</content><author><name>Robert Ritz</name></author><category term="pollution" /><summary type="html">I put the new Sqair air purifier from Smart Air to the test in a controlled experiment</summary><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://mongoliandatastories.com/images/sqair-real-world-test/cover.jpeg" /><media:content medium="image" url="https://mongoliandatastories.com/images/sqair-real-world-test/cover.jpeg" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" /></entry><entry><title type="html">Mongolian Electoral District Analysis 2020</title><link href="https://mongoliandatastories.com/Mongolian-Electoral-District-Demographic-Analysis" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Mongolian Electoral District Analysis 2020" /><published>2019-06-17T00:00:00+08:00</published><updated>2019-06-17T00:00:00+08:00</updated><id>https://mongoliandatastories.com/Mongolian-Electoral-District-Demographic-Analysis</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://mongoliandatastories.com/Mongolian-Electoral-District-Demographic-Analysis">&lt;h4 id=&quot;2020-parliamentary-election&quot;&gt;2020 Parliamentary Election&lt;/h4&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The current election saw a switch back to the block voting system used in 1992 and 2008. This system has both &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.ubc.ca/mongolia/2019/plurality-at-large-voting-revisited-for-2020/&quot;&gt;positives and negatives&lt;/a&gt;, and this system has much larger election districts than the previous single-member districts of the 2016 election. This allows us to more easily analyze the districts with the available data.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To put all of the data together and make it user friendly, I built an interactive data explorer that allows the reader to see key indicators of election districts. The indicators covered in the app include:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Population indicators&lt;/strong&gt;: population, household size, herder percent, age group breakdown&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Economic indicators (self-reported)&lt;/strong&gt;: salary, household loans, employment, education levels&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quality of life indicators&lt;/strong&gt;: crime, house type, toilet &amp;amp; water type, heating type&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The data was collected from &lt;a href=&quot;http://1212.mn&quot;&gt;1212.mn&lt;/a&gt; and also the &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nso.mn/nada/index.php/catalog/115&quot;&gt;Household Socioeconomic Survey of 2016&lt;/a&gt;, which is the latest survey that contains precise geographic labeling. Both data sources are maintained by the National Statistics Office of Mongolia.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Several themes developed through my research into this data. These themes are perhaps not surprising for many readers familiar with Mongolia, but it is never a bad thing to back up observations with data. I encourage you, the reader, to explore the app yourself (&lt;a href=&quot;https://mongolia-2020-election.anvil.app&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;), but below I give an overview of the themes for your convenience.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h4 id=&quot;ulaanbaatar-vs-countryside&quot;&gt;Ulaanbaatar vs Countryside&lt;/h4&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the best-known difference in Mongolia is that of Ulaanbaatar and the countryside. The image of busy urban Ulaanbaatar juxtaposed with the bucolic countryside could hardly be more different. Indeed the data shows significant differences in many areas. Let’s compare the population pyramid for the election district with the highest population, Songinokhairkhan District in Ulaanbaatar, with the least populace, Bulgan Aimag.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/mongolian-electoral-analysis-2020/population-pyramid.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;There is an obvious population difference, but the size of the age groups also shows a marked difference between the two. Where you have a large spike in the 20–40 age group in Songinokhairkhan, Bulgans’ age groups have much less variability and are quite flat from 15–50. You will see a similar trend in the highest population election districts compared with the least populated ones.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This means the voting demographics in rural areas are more widely distributed than in urban areas. D.Byambjav and E.Gerelt-Od &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.ubc.ca/mongolia/2020/voter-demography/&quot;&gt;previously discussed&lt;/a&gt; the large and less engaged block of voters under 35. If youth engagement initiatives are successful, this block of voters will be less powerful in rural districts that have a similar age distribution to Bulgan.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/mongolian-electoral-analysis-2020/percentage-employed.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Employment differs significantly as well between Ulaanbaatar and most rural districts. Rural election districts tend to show significantly higher rates of overall employment than the urban ones. In the chart above, the “employed percentage” refers to the proportion of the working-age population that is employed. Urban districts tend to have between 45–55% employment, with rural districts between 65–75%.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/mongolian-electoral-analysis-2020/average-salary.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Salaries are also significantly higher in Ulaanbaatar. The salaries shown above are self-reported from 2016, but they show a very clear picture. Employment levels may be higher in rural areas, but salary levels are conversely lower. This is an obvious area where the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.ubc.ca/mongolia/2020/guest-post-economic-policy-party-platforms/&quot;&gt;economic policy of the party platforms&lt;/a&gt; could address these inequalities.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h4 id=&quot;outliers-mining-areas-and-bayan-ulgii&quot;&gt;Outliers: Mining Areas and Bayan-Ulgii&lt;/h4&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The Ulaanbaatar vs countryside theme may be the biggest theme in the data, it doesn’t give the full picture. There are two sets of outliers that “buck the trend”.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The first is that the two primary mining areas of Mongolia, Erdenet (in Orkhon) and Oyu Toloig (in Umnugovi), show significantly higher salaries, lower loan rates, and higher educations than other rural election districts.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/mongolian-electoral-analysis-2020/loans-vs-salary.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This bubble plot shows the percent of households with loans vs monthly average salaries in each election district. The two highlighted in red are Orkhon (lower right) and Umnugovi (upper left). All of the bubbles above 550k average monthly salary except for the two in red are located in Ulaanbaatar.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;These two election districts (and the urban workforce where the company offices are) have benefited heavily from the mining industry of Mongolia. Industrialization as proposed in the party platforms would most likely further benefit these areas, as this is where the raw materials would come from.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/mongolian-electoral-analysis-2020/loans-vs-salary2.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The second outlier is Bayan-Ulgii. In the chart above, the red bubble to the farthest left is Bayan-Ulgii, and the red bubble on the far right is Khan-Uul District. The average household size is 5.2, significantly larger than the most populace district Songinokhairkhan of 3.8. Besides larger family sizes, Bayan-Ulgii has the lowest average monthly salary.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h4 id=&quot;ulaanbaatar-districts-have-diverseneeds&quot;&gt;Ulaanbaatar Districts Have Diverse Needs&lt;/h4&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The districts of Ulaanbaatar also show diverse needs. Every district also contains part of the ger district. This means that there is a mix of urban and peri-urban in every election district of Ulaanbaatar. In the center of the city, households are connected to the central water, heating, and sewage systems. In the ger district, living standards become sharply different, with no central heat or water connections.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/mongolian-electoral-analysis-2020/heating-type.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The unique layout of the city districts ensures that at least 20% of the population of each district uses pit toilets and wood or coal for heat. More than 40% of Khan-Uul district households, the most affluent election district in Mongolia, use ordinary wood and coal stoves for heat.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h4 id=&quot;mps-will-represent-very-diversegroups&quot;&gt;MPs Will Represent Very Diverse Groups&lt;/h4&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the outcome of the election, it is clear that the needs of citizens in election districts are not uniform, and even the common trope of UB vs the rest doesn’t hold up completely. Even though Mongolia a small country with a heavy focus on mining, it isn’t clear that the party platforms address the inequalities mentioned above.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;While the economics platforms of the DP, MPP, and Right Person Electorate all &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.ubc.ca/mongolia/2020/guest-post-economic-policy-party-platforms/&quot;&gt;focus on heavy industry&lt;/a&gt;, it isn’t clear how heavy industry would help rural areas outside of the main mining areas lacking in high paying jobs, or whether it would increase employment levels in Ulaanbaatar.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;hr /&gt;
&lt;h4 id=&quot;mds-newsletter&quot;&gt;MDS Newsletter&lt;/h4&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Thank you for reading. Mongolian Data Stories has a free newsletter! To receive new articles straight to your inbox so you never miss out, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.getrevue.co/profile/mongoliandatastories&quot;&gt;click here to sign up&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</content><author><name>Robert Ritz</name></author><category term="election" /><category term="parliament" /><summary type="html">2020 Parliamentary Election</summary><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://mongoliandatastories.com/images/mongolian-electoral-analysis-2020/cover.png" /><media:content medium="image" url="https://mongoliandatastories.com/images/mongolian-electoral-analysis-2020/cover.png" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" /></entry></feed>