The COVID-19 pandemic not only poses a serious and sustained threat to the health of the Myanmar population but also creates economic disruptions and challenges for efforts to avert poverty, food insecurity, and malnutrition. Responding to the urgent need for timely evidence to inform policy responses, Derek Headey, Sophie Goudet, Isabel Lambrecht, Than Zaw Oo, Elisa Maria Maffioli, Erica Field, and Russell Toth utilize findings from the COVID-19 Rural and Urban Food Security Survey to assess how the pandemic is impacting Myanmar’s food security and welfare.
You can view the full policy note by Derek, Sophie, Isabel, Than Zaw Oo, Elisa, Erica, and Russell in English here and Burmese here.
မြန်မာဘာသာဖြင့်ရေးသားထားသော စာတမ်းအပြည့်အစုံကို ဤနေရာတွင် ဖတ်ရှုနိုင်ပါသည်။
Background
In late June and early July 2020, the Myanmar Agriculture Policy Support Activity (MAPSA) began implementing the COVID-19 Rural and Urban Food Security Survey (RUFSS), a phone survey of over 2,000 mothers split between Yangon and the Dry Zone. The survey assesses the economic and food and nutrition security impacts of COVID-19 and addresses three basic objectives:
- What is the scale and scope of income changes by location, livelihood, and economic status?
- How do food and nutrition insecurity measures vary by location, livelihood, and economic status?
- What kinds of maternal and household characteristics predict poverty and food security?
Income and poverty findings
By far the largest perceived impact of the COVID-19 shock is the loss of income or employment, with a somewhat higher rate in urban areas compared to rural (Figure 1). Interestingly, 20 percent of urban respondents stated they are concerned about food supply, referring to food availability, prices, or affordability, whereas just 10 percent of rural respondents reported supply concerns.
When stratified by livelihood, self-reported economic impacts of COVID-19 suggest that farming households were less frequently impacted by income or employment whereas both skilled and unskilled households are more frequently impacted. Likewise, farming households are less likely to be affected by food supply issues or shop closures, while households with trade/retail livelihoods are most affected by shop closures.
The data also suggest a severe decline in reported income for most households. Perhaps most worrying, large numbers of households report little or no income in June. However, the income data reported are clearly susceptible not only to recall error but also to seasonality, particularly for farming households. After accounting for these issues, media reported income fell by 34.4 percent, with somewhat higher losses reported by skilled and unskilled labor households, farming households, and trade/retail households, and lower losses reported by salaried households.
Food and nutrition insecurity
Just over 20 percent of respondents said they were worried about accessing sufficient food or sufficiently healthy food, with these anxieties much more prevalent among the urban sample and among unskilled labor. Similarly, about 22 percent of urban respondents reported consuming fewer food types, in contrast to about 10 percent of rural respondents. Relatively few respondents reported skipping meals, but about 23 percent of urban respondents reported eating less quantity, and around one-quarter of respondents from unskilled laborer households stated there had been times when they had eaten less.
Strikingly, inadequate diets are almost 20 percentage points more prevalent among urban mothers compared to rural mothers. Despite being poorer, only 18 percent of respondents from farming households had inadequate diets compared to 25 percent of respondents from unskilled labor households and 29 percent from skilled labor households. Furthermore, diets were often inadequate for respondents from asset-rich households and those with higher income livelihoods.
These surprising rural-urban differences for dietary diversity could be explained by several factors, including unusually high availability of nutritious foods in rural areas at this particular time of year, more severe food supply disruptions in urban compared to rural areas, food taboos related to the fact that the urban sample of mothers was either pregnant or has recently given birth and more permanent structural differences in diet between Yangon and the Dry Sone.
Policy recommendations
The results of this research have significant policy implications for social protection and economic recovery strategies in Myanmar. The full set of recommendations can be viewed in the policy note.
- In response to income losses associated with COVID-19, the Government of Myanmar introduced a series of emergency measures to provide basic assistance to vulnerable households. It is critical to assess the effectiveness of such assistance in reaching food-insecure populations and maintaining basic food security.
- Maternal and child cash transfers (MCCT) currently cover mothers of young children in five states/regions. However, in September 2020, mothers not covered by this program are being offered only a one-off 30,000 Kyat (USD 22) payment through remote enrollment.
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- In the long run, the government should look to accelerate the multi-year scale-up of the regular MCCT program.
- In the short run, resources should be provided for continued support to mothers not covered in the regular MCCT program, for the means to impart social behavioral change through remote platforms, and for evaluating the targeting and impacts of these efforts.
- Job creation must be at the heart of economic recovery strategies, including for returning migrants and unskilled casual laborers. However, such efforts should be closely monitored.
- Whether loans and other credit are viable and effective coping mechanisms and economic recovery strategies for those adversely affected by the COVID-19 crisis should be assessed closely. Such approaches may create indebtedness problems for some groups.
- Income losses from childbirth are large. More family-friendly work policies are justified to protect pregnant women and women with young children from the loss of employment and wages.
- Economic recovery initiatives should emphasize enhancing women’s access to resources, including – but not only – during the first 1,000 days of life.
Related blog posts
- COVID-19 and last-mile delivery: Challenges for food retail shops (early July 2020)
- Crop trading during the pandemic: Lessons learned in Myanmar (Late June)
- COVID-19 and business responses: How are Yangon’s poultry farmers adapting to the pandemic? (Late July)
MAPSA is monitoring the impact of COVID-19 on key actors in Myanmar’s agri-food system. This blog post highlights one of the many recent surveys and policy notes that MAPSA has conducted to assess the emerging constraints that these key actors face and to mitigate the possible impacts of COVID-19 on rural livelihoods and food security. Additional blog posts are available highlighting MAPSA’s research on the impact of COVID-19 on key actors in Myanmar’s agri-food system. Surveys are ongoing, and findings and recommendations will be periodically updated.
Derek Headey is a Senior Research Fellow with the Food Consumption and Nutrition Division of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), based in Yangon, Myanmar. Sophie Goudet is an independent nutrition researcher and consultant to IFPRI, based in Yangon. Isabel Lambrecht is a Research Fellow in the Development Strategy and Governance Division (DSGD) of IFPRI, based in Yangon. Than Zaw Oo is a Research Analyst with DSGD of IFPRI, based in Yangon. Elisa Maria Maffioli is an Assistant Professor of Health Management and Policy at the Michigan School of Public Health, based in Michigan, United States. Erica Field is a Professor of Economics and Global Health at Duke University, based in North Carolina, United States. Russell Toth is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Economics at the University of Sydney, based in Sydney, Australia.
This blog post was prepared by Michael Wang, Mickey Leland International Hunger Fellow in DSGD of IFPRI, based in Yangon. The analysis and opinions expressed in this piece are solely those of the authors.
