› › Poverty Food Insecurity And Social Protection During Covid 19 In Myanmar Combined Evidence From A Household Telephone Survey And Micro Simulations

Poverty, food insecurity, and social protection during COVID-19 in Myanmar: Combined evidence from a household telephone survey and micro-simulations

Author : Headey, Derek D.

Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Page : 13 pages

File Size : 17,8 MB

Release : 2020-11-10

Category : Political Science

ISBN :

Get eBook

Book Description

This study assesses the welfare impacts of COVID-19 on households in Myanmar by combining recent high-frequency telephone survey evidence for two specific rural and urban geographies with national-level survey-based simulations designed to assess ex-ante impacts on poverty with differing amounts of targeted cash transfers. The first source of evidence – the COVID-19 Rural and Urban Food Security Survey (C19- RUFSS) – consists of four rounds of monthly data collected from a sample of over 2,000 households, all with young children or pregnant mothers, divided evenly between urban and peri-urban Yangon and the rural Dry Zone. This survey sheds light on household incomes prior to COVID-19 (January 2020), incomes and food security status soon after the first COVID-19 wave (June 2020), the gradual economic recovery thereafter (July and August 2020), and the start of the second COVID-19 wave in September and October 2020. This survey gives timely and high-quality evidence on the recent welfare impacts of COVID-19 for two important geographies and for households that are nutritionally highly vulnerable to shocks due to the presence of very young children or pregnant mothers. However, the relatively narrow geographic and demographic focus of this telephone survey and the need for forecasting the poverty impacts of COVID-19 into 2021 prompt us to explore simulationbased evidence derived by applying parameter shocks to household models developed from nationally representative household survey data collected prior to COVID-19, the 2015 Myanmar Poverty and Living Conditions Survey (MPLCS). By realistically simulating the kinds of disruptions imposed on Myanmar’s economy by both international forces, e.g., lower agricultural exports and workers’ remittances, and domestic COVID-19 prevention measures. e.g., stay-at-home orders and temporary business closures, we not only can predict the impacts of COVID-19 on household poverty at the rural, urban, and national levels, but also can assess the further benefits to household welfare of social protection in the form of monthly household cash transfers of different magnitudes. Combined, these two sources of evidence yield insights on both the on-the-ground impacts of COVID-19 in recent months and the potential poverty reduction impacts of social protection measures in the coming year. We conclude the study with a discussion of the policy implications of these findings.



Myanmar's poverty and food insecurity crisis: Support to agriculture and food assistance is urgently needed to preserve a foundation for recovery

Author : Myanmar Agriculture Policy Support Activity (MAPSA)

Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Page : 19 pages

File Size : 20,71 MB

Release : 2021-07-13

Category : Political Science

ISBN :

Get eBook

Book Description

National poverty rates in Myanmar have risen dramatically due to economic disruption following the February 1, 2021 military take-over of government. Depending on assumptions about the scale of the economic impacts, household poverty rates are predicted to have risen to between 40 and 50 percent in 2021, compared to 32 percent in 2015 and just under 25 percent in 2017. Between 849,000 and 1.87 million new households are thus living in poverty in 2021 in addition to the estimated 2.86 million households already in poverty in 2015. The poverty impacts of these disruptions are significant not only in the sharp increases in the total number of households in poverty, but also in the substantial deepening of poverty for households that were already poor. By the end of the current financial year, the average poverty gap (expenditure shortfall) is predicted to have increased from 26 percent in 2015 to between 34 and 40 percent for individuals living in poor households.



Consumer immobility predicts both macroeconomic contractions and household poverty during COVID-19

Author : Headey, Derek D.

Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Page : 17 pages

File Size : 45,50 MB

Release : 2021-02-13

Category : Political Science

ISBN :

Get eBook

Book Description

Amid extreme uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic, economic policymakers have struggled to respond to rapidly changing circumstances with appropriate speed and scale. One policy obstacle is the dearth of real-time indicators of the pandemic’s economic impacts, especially in low and middle income countries (LMICs). Here we show that an ‘immobility’ indicator from GoogleTM – measuring the extent to which consumers are staying at home more – is a powerful predictor of changes in household poverty in Myanmar, as well as aggregate national consumption and gross domestic product (GDP) in cross-country data. Combined, this evidence suggests that real-time mobility indicators have the potential to inform a wide range of policy deliberations, including forecasting models, fine-tuning the timing of both economic stimulus and social protection interventions, and tracking economic recovery from this unprecedented crisis.



Urban food prices under lockdown: Evidence from Myanmar’s traditional food retail sector during COVID-19

Author : Goeb, Joseph

Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Page : 23 pages

File Size : 16,62 MB

Release : 2021-05-27

Category : Political Science

ISBN :

Get eBook

Book Description

Many governments imposed stringent lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic as a public health measure to suppress the spread of the disease. With consumer incomes already depressed, the potential impacts of these measures on urban food prices are of particular concern. This working paper examines the changes in Myanmar’s urban food prices during lockdown using detailed food price data collected from a panel of phone surveys conducted in August and September 2020 of 431 family-owned retail shops in Myanmar’s two largest cities, Yangon and Mandalay. We find that the supply side of Myanmar’s food retail sector was largely resilient to the shocks and lockdowns throughout the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Estimates from a fixed effects differencein-differences model reveal that food prices were 3 percent higher in townships under lockdown compared to those not under lockdown, a statistically significant but modest effect. Lockdowns had smaller effects on prices for highly processed food items sourced directly from companies, but larger effects on prices for raw or lightly processed commodities sourced through wholesale markets, which comprise a larger share of urban consumer’s diets. Retailer margins did not change significantly under lockdown restrictions, suggesting no evidence of price gouging. Overall, our findings of a modest impact of the lockdown on urban food prices underscore the importance of keeping the food supply chain–including wholesale markets and retail shops–functioning as completely and as safely as possible during times of crisis, as was mostly the case early in the crisis for the two cities in this study.



Double Jeopardy: COVID-19, coup d'etat and poverty in Myanmar

Author : Myanmar Agriculture Policy Support Activity (MAPSA)

Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Page : 28 pages

File Size : 11,61 MB

Release : 2022-06-28

Category : Political Science

ISBN :

Get eBook

Book Description

Myanmar experienced four distinct COVID shocks to its economy over 2020 to early 2022 as well as a military takeover in February 2021 that created severe political, civil and economic turmoil. COVID and the coup d’état reversed a decade of growth and poverty reduction, but the full extent of the crisis on household poverty has remained uncertain because of the challenges of conducting large-scale in-person welfare surveys during the pandemic and recent political instability. Here we combine ex ante simulation models with diverse phone survey evidence from mid-2020 to early 2022 to estimate the poverty impacts of these shocks and some of the mechanisms behind them. Both simulations and surveys are consistent in painting a grim picture of rising poverty, capital-depleting coping mechanisms, and the complete collapse of government-provided social protection.



The status of women in agrifood systems

Author : Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Publisher : Food & Agriculture Org.

Page : 264 pages

File Size : 44,70 MB

Release : 2023-04-13

Category : Social Science

ISBN : 9251378142

Get eBook

Book Description

The status of women in agrifood systems report uses extensive new data and analyses to provide a comprehensive picture of women’s participation, benefits, and challenges they face working in agrifood systems globally. The report shows how increasing women’s empowerment and gender equality in agrifood systems enhances women’s well-being and the well-being of their households, creating opportunities for economic growth, greater incomes, productivity and resilience. The report comes more than a decade after the publication of the State of food and agriculture (SOFA) 2010–11: Women in agriculture – Closing the gender gap for development. SOFA 2010–11 documented the tremendous costs of gender inequality not only for women but also for agriculture and the broader economy and society, making the business case for closing existing gender gaps in accessing agricultural assets, inputs and services. Moving beyond agriculture, The status of women in agrifood systems reflects not only on how gender equality and women’s empowerment are central to the transition towards sustainable and resilient agrifood systems but also on how the transformation of agrifood systems can contribute to gender equality and women’s empowerment. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the available evidence on gender equality and women’s empowerment in agrifood systems that has been produced over the last decade. The report also provides policymakers and development actors with an extensive review of what has worked, highlighting the promise of moving from closing specific gender gaps towards the adoption of gender-transformative approaches that explicitly address the formal and informal structural constraints to equality. It concludes with specific recommendations on the way forward. Last update 03/08/2023



Psychosocial, Educational, and Economic Impacts of COVID-19

Author : Brizeida Hernandez-Sanchez

Publisher : BoD – Books on Demand

Page : 512 pages

File Size : 41,33 MB

Release : 2023-06-14

Category : Medical

ISBN : 1803550392

Get eBook

Book Description

The COVID-19 pandemic had numerous negative effects on many aspects of life. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the psychosocial, educational, and economic impacts of the pandemic worldwide. It includes thirty-two chapters that highlight the importance of analyzing, evaluating, and carrying out appropriate treatments to prevent the mental and social consequences of the pandemic. Topics addressed include the psychological impacts of COVID-19 on different groups of people, including students, healthcare professionals, disadvantaged groups, and others; the educational impacts of COVID-19 on students, educators, students with disabilities, doctors, and so on; and the economic impacts of COVID-19 on managers, employees, residential care homes, and other businesses worldwide.



Assessing the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the livelihoods of rural people

Author : Sitko, N., Knowles M., Viberti, F., Bordi, D.

Publisher : Food & Agriculture Org.

Page : 69 pages

File Size : 40,99 MB

Release : 2022-03-14

Category : Technology & Engineering

ISBN : 9251353395

Get eBook

Book Description

In this paper we focus specifically on differences in the welfare impacts of COVID-19 on rural livelihoods between countries using nationally representative data that we disaggregate by food system typology. This typology captures key structural differences in the organization of rural economies and the vulnerabilities to rural livelihoods due to the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdown measures. In particular, we draw on household survey data collected from 54 countries through the World Bank’s COVID-19 High Frequency Monitoring Dashboard to generate descriptive data on COVID-19 impacts in rural areas across three dimensions: income, coping strategies and food security. These descriptive data are disaggregated into four food system categories and contextualized and validated through a systematic review of rigorous, survey-based studies of COVID-19 impacts in rural areas. Through this analysis, the report provides insights on how COVID-19 is influencing rural livelihoods, how its impacts vary between countries and food system typologies, and, ultimately, how policymakers and the international community need to respond in order to foster an inclusive and sustainable recovery.



Changes in household income, food consumption, and diet quality in urban and rural areas of Ghana during the COVID-19 crisis: Results of 2020 phone surveys

Author : Ragasa, Catherine

Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Page : 29 pages

File Size : 26,25 MB

Release : 2021-11-03

Category : Political Science

ISBN :

Get eBook

Book Description

This study provides an assessment of changes in household income, livelihood sources, food consumption, and diet quality during the first months of the COVID-19 crisis in a sample of households drawn from both urban and rural areas in Ghana. Phone surveys were conducted in June 2020 with 423 urban consumers in Accra and with 369 small-scale crop and fish farmers in rural areas in six regions in middle and southern Ghana. Data was disaggregated by asset quintiles for both the urban and the rural samples. Reduction in incomes were reported by 83 percent of urban households in Accra, mainly due to business closures and lower sales from their trading enterprises. Most households, however, are showing resilience in terms of food consumption, with a majority of urban consumers surveyed maintaining their pre-COVID-19 level of food consumption; only 9 percent of urban consumers reported reductions in food consumption to cope with income loss due to COVID-19. For the respondents in the rural areas in middle and southern Ghana, 76 percent reported income loss, and all reported that their livelihoods had been affected. Thirty-four percent of 2020 minor season crop farmers experienced difficulty in selling their produce, and 43 percent of all sample crop farmers anticipated difficulties in accessing inputs in the 2020 major season, mainly fertilizers and agrochemicals. Of those growing fish, 53 percent experienced difficulty in accessing inputs, mainly feeds; 60 percent reported increased input prices; and 64 percent of those harvesting from March to June 2020 experienced difficulties in selling their fish because of lower demand, lower tilapia prices, and higher transportation costs. Despite farm and nonfarm income losses, a majority of households in the rural sample reported maintaining previous levels of diet diversity and food consumption - only 11 percent reported reducing their food consumption to cope with income loss. Several months into the COVID-19 crisis in Ghana, households in both rural and urban areas showed some resilience in terms of their agricultural production and food consumption. Regular monitoring is needed, however, especially if household savings start to dry up and coping mechanisms become more restrictive.



Agricultural extension in times of crisis and emergent threats: Effectiveness of a fall armyworm information intervention in Myanmar Author

Author : Goeb, Joseph

Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Page : 36 pages

File Size : 12,15 MB

Release : 2023-07-28

Category : Political Science

ISBN :

Get eBook

Book Description

Agricultural extension can have important impacts on vulnerable populations by increasing food production, which improves both rural incomes and urban food security. Yet, crises induced by violent conflict or disease outbreaks can sever the connections between extension agents and farmers. Understanding how agricultural extension systems can safely and effectively reach farmers in times of crisis could help stabilize agri-food systems in fragile states. In the context of COVID-19, a military coup, and an emergent threat of fall armyworm in Myanmar, this paper uses a randomized controlled trial to test the effectiveness of two cellphone-based extension interventions – a direct-to-farmer and a lead farmer intervention – for fall armyworm control in maize. Despite low compliance, both interventions caused knowledge improvements. However, damage control estimates show that the lead-farmer group used pesticides most effectively. Similar cellphone-based lead-farmer programs could be an effective tool in fragile states and when faced with emergent threats to agriculture.