Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

This paper documents some of the first estimates of the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on food security in a low- and middle-income country context. It combines nationally representative pre- pandemic household survey data with follow-up phone survey data from Mali and exploits sub- national variation in the intensity of pandemic-related disruptions between urban and rural areas. These disruptions stem from both government policies aiming to slow the spread of the virus and also individual behavior motivated by fear of contracting the virus. The paper finds evidence of increasing food insecurity in Mali associated with the pandemic. Difference-in-difference estimates show that moderate food insecurity increased by about 8 percentage points - a 33 percent increase - in urban areas compared with rural areas in Mali. The estimates are substantially larger than existing predictions of the average effect of the pandemic on food security globally and therefore highlights the critical importance of understanding effect heterogeneity.

Coronavirus --- COVID-19 --- Disease Control and Prevention --- Food Security --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Inequality --- Pandemic Impact --- Poverty --- Poverty and Health --- Poverty Reduction --- Rural Urban Linkages --- Urban Development

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Nearly one in three children under age five in the Philippines is stunted, a key marker of undernutrition. This rate is high for the country's level of income. This paper provides the first detailed multivariate analysis of potential drivers of stunting in the Philippines, using data from the 2015 National Nutrition Survey. Potential drivers are analyzed individually and grouped in major categories. The analysis finds that stunting between 24-60 months is principally associated with suboptimal prenatal conditions and inadequate food security and diversity. If the results are given a causal interpretation, they imply that if all Filipino newborns had adequate prenatal conditions, the fraction stunted at age 24-60 months would fall by 20 percent. Similarly, providing adequate food security and diversity to all Filipino children would reduce stunting by 22 percent. Other factors - including access to water, sanitation, and environmental conditions - have less strong associations with stunting. The results point to a series of policy priorities to reduce stunting: supporting the nutrition and health of expectant mothers, ensuring access to contraception to reduce adolescent pregnancy, and ensuring that children consume a variety of healthy foods, including protein-dense foods such as milk, meat, and eggs.

Child Health --- Early Child and Children's Health --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Nutrition --- Poverty and Health --- Poverty Reduction --- Reproductive Health --- Stunting

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in border closures in many countries and a sharp reduction in overall international mobility. However, this disruption of legal pathways to migration has raised concerns that potential migrants may turn to irregular migration routes as a substitute. This paper examines how the pandemic has changed intentions to migrate from The Gambia, the country with the highest pre-pandemic per-capita irregular migration rates in Africa. A large-scale panel survey conducted in 2019 and 2020 is used to compare changes in intentions to migrate to Europe and to neighboring Senegal. The data show that the pandemic has reduced the intention to migrate to both destinations, with approximately one-third of young males expressing less intention to migrate. The largest reductions in migration intentions are for individuals who were unsure of their intent pre-pandemic, and for poorer individuals who are no longer able to afford the costs of migrating at a time when these costs have increased and their remittance income has fallen. This paper also introduces the methodology of priming experiments to the study of migration intentions, by randomly varying the salience of the COVID-19 pandemic before eliciting intentions to migrate. There is no impact of this added salience, which appears to be because knowledge of the virus, while imperfect, was already enough to inform migration decisions. Nevertheless, despite these decreases in intentions, the overall desire to migrate the backway to Europe remains high, highlighting the need for legal migration pathways to support migrants and divert them from the risks of backway migration.

Coronavirus --- COVID-19 --- Disease Control and Prevention --- Labor Force Survey --- Labor Markets --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Migration --- Migratory Intention --- Pandemic Impact --- Poverty and Health --- Poverty Reduction --- Remittances --- Social Protections and Labor

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and the attempts to limit its spread have resulted in profound economic impacts, and a significant contraction in the global economy is expected. This paper provides some of the first evidence on the socioeconomic impacts of and responses to the pandemic among households and individuals in Sub-Saharan Africa. To do so, reduced-form econometric methods are applied to longitudinal household survey data from Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, and Uganda - originating from the pre-COVID-19 face-to-face household surveys and from the novel phone surveys that are being implemented during the pandemic. The headline findings are fourfold. First, although false beliefs about COVID-19 remain prevalent, government action to limit the spread of the disease is associated with greater individual knowledge of the disease and increased uptake of precautionary measures. Second, 256 million individuals - 77 percent of the population in the four countries - are estimated to live in households that have lost income due to the pandemic. Third, attempts to cope with this loss are exacerbated by the inability to access medicine and staple foods among 20 to 25 percent of the households in each country, and food insecurity is disproportionately borne by households that were already impoverished prior to the pandemic. Fourth, student-teacher contact has dropped from a pre-COVID-19 rate of 96 percent to just 17 percent among households with school-age children. These findings can help inform decisions by governments and international organizations on measures to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and reveal the need for continued monitoring.

Access of Poor to Social Services --- Access To Basic Services --- Access To Education --- Coronavirus --- COVID-19 --- Employment and Unemployment --- Food Security --- Income Loss --- Inequality --- Pandemic Impact --- Poverty --- Poverty and Health --- Poverty Monitoring and Analysis --- Poverty Reduction --- Social Protections and Labor --- Socioeconomic Impact

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

The study is a randomized controlled trial that investigates the impact of four demand-side interventions on health screening for diabetes and hypertension among Armenian adults ages 35-68 who had not been tested in the last 12 months. The interventions are personal invitations from a physician (intervention group 1), personal invitations with information about peer screening behavior (intervention group 2), a labeled but unconditional cash transfer in the form of a pharmacy voucher (intervention group 3), and a conditional cash transfer in the form of a pharmacy voucher (intervention group 4). Compared with the control group in which only 3.5 percent of participants went for both screenings during the study period, interventions 1 to 3 led to a significant increase in the screening rate of about 15 percentage points among participants. The highest intervention impact was measured among recipients in intervention group 4, whose uptake of screening on both tests increased by 31.2 percentage points. The levels of cost-effectiveness of intervention groups 1, 2, and 4 are similar while for intervention group 3 it is about twice more expensive per additional person screened.

Access to Health Services --- Conditional Cash Transfers --- Diabetes --- Disease Control and Prevention --- Health Screening --- Health Service Management and Delivery --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Hypertension --- Incentives --- Non-Communicable Diseases --- Poverty and Health --- Poverty Reduction --- Primary Health Care --- Services and Transfers to Poor