Income shock and food insecurity prediction Vietnam under the pandemic

Khoa Vu; Nguyen Dinh Tuan Vuong; Tu-Anh Vu-Thanh; Anh Ngoc Nguyen

doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2022.105838

Income shock and food insecurity prediction Vietnam under the pandemic

World Dev. 2022 May:153:105838. doi: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2022.105838. Epub 2022 Feb 16.

Authors

Khoa Vu¹, Nguyen Dinh Tuan Vuong², Tu-Anh Vu-Thanh³, Anh Ngoc Nguyen⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota, United States.
² Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States.
³ Fulbright School of Public Policy and Management, Fulbright University Vietnam, Vietnam.
⁴ Development and Policies Research Center (DEPOCEN), Vietnam.

Abstract

As COVID-19 threatens the food security of vulnerable populations across the globe, there is an increasing need to identify places that are affected most in order to target aid. We propose a two-step approach to predict changes in food insecurity risk caused by income shocks at a granular level using existing household-level data and external information on aggregate income shocks. We apply this approach to assess changes in food insecurity risk during the pandemic in Vietnam. Using national household survey data between 2010 and 2018, we first estimate that a 10% decrease in income leads to a 3.5% increase in food insecurity. We then use the 2019 national Labor Force Survey to predict changes in the share of food-insecure households caused by the income shocks during the pandemic for 702 districts. We find that the small, predicted change in food insecurity risk at the national level masks substantial variation at the district level, and changes in food insecurity risk are larger among young children. Food relief policies, therefore, should prioritize a small number of districts predicted to be severely affected.

Keywords: COVID-19; Food insecurity; Income shock; Vietnam.