representative sample of rural Bangladeshi households. • With the onset of the pandemic, combined with the lockdown restrictions imposed from March through May 2020, moderate and severe food insecurity tripled to 45 percent. This was likely driven by income losses and difficulties accessing food because of shop closures. • By January 2021, the proportion of moderately or severely food insecure households had largely returned to pre-pandemic levels. The September-October 2021 survey showed no meaningful further change in the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity despite the strict national lockdown imposed in July-August 2021. • A different picture emerges when we include the prevalence of mild food insecurity. The proportion of households reporting any food insecurity (mild, moderate or severe) increased from the pre-pandemic average of 45.7 percent to 87.8 percent in June 2020, before declining to 70.9 percent in January 2021 and 68 percent in September-October 2021. Dimensions of food insecurity that include consuming less diverse diets, being unable to eat healthy/nutritious food, and above all, being worried about not having enough food increased dramatically at the start of the pandemic and have remained elevated. • Pre-pandemic, the majority of rural households in our sample were fully food secure; 18 months after the onset of the pandemic only 32 percent report no forms of food insecurity. • In the immediate months after the outbreak (June 2020), many rural households coped by reducing expenditures on non-food goods, electricity and other utilities, and health-related items. The use of these forms of coping mechanisms has subsequently declined. However, the proportion of rural households that purchased food on credit (69 percent in June 2020) has barely changed and in all surveys fielded since the start of the pandemic, more than half of surveyed households have borrowed money to buy food. The continued use of savings and the ongoing use of credit to purchase food is consistent with the elevated levels of worry about not having enough food. • A substantial share of rural households reported receiving cash or in-kind safety net support during the pandemic, mostly from government sources. • Continued and expanded support from safety nets may be important, as many rural households face ongoing food insecurity and are using unsustainable coping strategies.

The COVID-19 pandemic compelled the Government of Bangladesh to impose policy measures to stop the spread of the virus. These efforts were critical for public health, but have led to serious disruptions in the economy and livelihoods. To document the experiences of Bangladeshi households during this time, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Cornell University conducted two rounds of socioeconomic phone surveys in rural areas of Bangladesh in June 2020 and in January 2021, and benchmarked them against data from in-person interviews carried out on the same households in 2019. Together, these surveys have tracked the experiences of Bangladeshi households in terms of unemployment, income loss, food insecurity, and coping mechanisms during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We assess the impact of Ethiopia’s flagship social protection program, the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) on the adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on food and nutrition security of households, mothers, and children. We use both pre-pandemic in-person household survey data and a post-pandemic phone survey. Two thirds of our respondents reported that their incomes had fallen after the pandemic began and almost half reported that their ability to satisfy their food needs had worsened. Employing a household fixed effects difference-in-difference approach, we find that the household food insecurity increased by 11.7 percentage points and the size of the food gap by 0.47 months in the aftermath of the onset of the pandemic. Participation in the PSNP offsets virtually all of this adverse change; the likelihood of becoming food insecure increased by only 2.4 percentage points for PSNP households and the duration of the food gap increased by only 0.13 months. The protective role of PSNP is greater for poorer households and those living in remote areas. Results are robust to definitions of PSNP participation, different estimators and how we account for the non-randomness of mobile phone ownership. PSNP households were less likely to reduce expenditures on health and education by 7.7 percentage points and were less likely to reduce expenditures on agricultural inputs by 13 percentage points. By contrast, mothers’ and children’s diets changed little, despite some changes in the composition of diets with consumption of animal source foods declining significantly.

This paper combines pre-pandemic face-to-face survey data with follow up phone surveys collected in April-May 2020 to quantify the overall and differential impacts of COVID-19 on household food security, labor market participation and local food prices in Nigeria. We exploit spatial variation in exposure to COVID-19 related infections and lockdown measures along with temporal differences in our outcomes of interest using a difference-in-difference approach. We find that those households exposed to higher COVID-19 cases or mobility lockdowns experience a significant increase in measures of food insecurity. Examining possible transmission channels for this effect, we find that COVID-19 significantly reduces labor market participation and increases food prices. We find that impacts differ by economic activities and households. For instance, lockdown measures increased households' experience of food insecurity by 12 percentage points and reduced the probability of participation in non-farm business activities by 13 percentage points. These lockdown measures have smaller impacts on wage-related activities and farming activities. In terms of food security, households relying on non-farm businesses, poorer households, those with school-aged children, and those living in remote and conflicted-affected zones have experienced relatively larger deteriorations in food insecurity. These findings can help inform immediate and medium-term policy responses, including social protection policies aiming at ameliorating the impacts of the pandemic, as well as guide targeting strategies of governments and international donor agencies by identifying the most impacted sub-populations.

Evidence shows that cash and in-kind transfer programs increase food security while interventions are ongoing, including during or immediately after shocks. But less is known about whether receipt of these programs can have protective effects for household food security against shocks that occur several years after interventions end. We study the effects of a transfer program implemented as a cluster-randomized control trial in rural Bangladesh from 2012-2014 – the Transfer Modality Research Initiative (TMRI) – on food security in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We assess TMRI’s impacts at three post-program time points: before the shock (2018), amidst the shock (2021), and after the immediate effects of the shock (2022). We find that TMRI showed protective effects on household food security during and after the pandemic, but program design features “mattered”; positive impacts were only seen in the treatment arm that combined cash transfers with nutrition behavior change communication (Cash+BCC). Other treatment arms – cash only, and food only – showed no significant sustained effects on our household food security measures after the intervention ended, nor did they show protective effects during the pandemic. A plausible mechanism is that investments made by Cash+BCC households in productive assets – specifically livestock – increased their pre-shock resilience capacity.

Public food transfer program provide a lifeline for the poor in both high- and low-income countries, and many countries stepped these up in response to COVID-19. But little is known about how effective these programs have been in reaching the poor during the crisis. This brief reviews the findings of an evaluation of Bangladesh’s Food Friendly Program, pointing to the difficulties encountered during the pandemic and lessons to help these program perform better in future crises.

This edition of the biennial Poverty and Shared Prosperity report brings sobering news. The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic and its associated economic crisis, compounded by the effects of armed conflict and climate change, are reversing hard-won gains in poverty reduction and shared prosperity. The fight to end poverty has suffered its worst setback in decades after more than 20 years of progress. The goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030, already at risk before the pandemic, is now beyond reach in the absence of swift, significant, and sustained action, and the objective of advancing shared prosperity—raising the incomes of the poorest 40 percent in each country—will be much more difficult. Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2020: Reversals of Fortune presents new estimates of COVID-19's impacts on global poverty and shared prosperity. Harnessing fresh data from frontline surveys and economic simulations, it shows that pandemic-related job losses and deprivation worldwide are hitting already poor and vulnerable people hard, while also shifting the profile of global poverty to include millions of 'new poor.' Original analysis included in the report shows that the new poor are more urban, better educated, and less likely to work in agriculture than those living in extreme poverty before COVID-19. It also gives new estimates of the impact of conflict and climate change, and how they overlap. These results are important for targeting policies to safeguard lives and livelihoods. It shows how some countries are acting to reverse the crisis, protect those most vulnerable, and promote a resilient recovery. These findings call for urgent action. If the global response fails the world's poorest and most vulnerable people now, the losses they have experienced to date will be minimal compared with what lies ahead. Success over the long term will require much more than stopping COVID-19. As efforts to curb the disease and its economic fallout intensify, the interrupted development agenda in low- and middle-income countries must be put back on track. Recovering from today's reversals of fortune requires tackling the economic crisis unleashed by COVID-19 with a commitment proportional to the crisis itself. In doing so, countries can also plant the seeds for dealing with the long-term development challenges of promoting inclusive growth, capital accumulation, and risk prevention—particularly the risks of conflict and climate change.