Toward inclusive food systems: Pandemics, vulnerable groups, and the role of social protection

empirical evidence on trends in diets, health, nutrition, and food security among rural populations was temporarily interrupted by the pandemic, allowing for analysis of the impact of the crisis. Three rounds of surveys had been conducted in 90 villages in three regions of the country between early 2017 and mid-2019, including approximately 1,080 households with mother-and-child pairs. The fourth survey in the series, which began in March 2020, was interrupted by the national lockdown in April and resumed in June after lockdown measures were eased. The study looked at child nutrition (body mass index [BMI]), child morbidity (caregiver-reported symptoms during previous week), diets (for women and children, using the measure of micronutrient intake), and household food security (shocks and access to food and to social assistance). The analysis found that mean BMI was 0.24 points higher in children surveyed post-lockdown compared to children surveyed pre-lockdown. No statistically significant differences were found in children’s and mother’s diets, or in household food insecurity, shocks, or social protection. However, the small change in social assistance scores may reflect the scale-up of some targeted social assistance post-lockdown. Though no evidence was found of a major food-security-related shock in the immediate aftermath of the April 2020 lockdown, the data suggest that these rural households were already struggling with high levels of food insecurity well before 2020. Moreover, the data also suggest these households were rarely covered by social assistance programs either before or after the lockdown, highlighting an important gap in safety net coverage.