69% rural people forced to skip meals in Bangladesh due to Covid, study shows 

The ongoing Covid-19 crisis caused a sharp decline in living standards and rising food insecurity in developing countries across the globe including Bangladesh.

An international team of economists conducted the study which was published in the journal Science Advances on 5 February, according to the website of Yale University. 

The study provides the first in-depth view of the health crisis's initial socioeconomic effects in low- and middle-income countries, using detailed micro data collected from tens of thousands of households across nine countries.  

The researcher was conducted over phone surveys from April through July 2020 in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Colombia, Ghana, Kenya, Nepal, Philippines, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone. In all of these countries, respondents reported drops in employment, income, and access to markets and services, translating into high levels of food insecurity. Many households reported being unable to meet basic nutritional needs. 

Mushfiq Mobarak, corresponding author of the study and faculty director of the Yale Research Initiative on Innovation and Scale (Y-RISE) said, "Covid-19 and its economic shock present a stark threat to residents of low- and middle-income countries — where most of the world's population resides — which lack the social safety nets that exist in rich countries."

"The evidence we've collected shows dire economic consequences, including rising food insecurity and falling income, which, if left unchecked, could thrust millions of vulnerable households into poverty," he added. 

 Across the surveys, the percentage of respondents reporting losses in income ranged from 8 percent in Kenya to 86 percent in Colombia, which means on average the loss was a staggering 70 percent in all the regions. In addition to that, around 29 percent respondents reported losing employment during the pandemic. 

Edward Miguel, a professor of economics at the University of California-Berkeley and a co-author of the study. "Our work is an exciting example of fruitful collaboration among research teams from a variety of institutions working in multiple countries simultaneously to improve our understanding of how Covid-19 has affected the living standards in low- and middle-income countries." 

Significant percentages of respondents across the surveys reported being forced to miss meals or reduce portion sizes, including 48 percent of rural Kenyan households, 69 percent of landless, agricultural households in Bangladesh, and 87 percent of rural households in Sierra Leone — the highest level of food insecurity. Poorer households generally reported higher rates of food insecurity, although rates were substantial even among the top half of each sample.  

The steep rise in food insecurity reported among children was particularly alarming given the potentially large negative long-term effects of under-nutrition, according to the study.

Survey results from Bangladesh and Nepal suggest that levels of food insecurity were far higher during the pandemic than during the same season in previous years.

In most countries, a large share of respondents reported reduced access to markets, likely due to lockdowns and other restrictions implemented to contain the spread of the virus. The availability of social support from governments or non-governmental organizations varied widely across the surveys, but the high rates of food insecurity reported suggest that support was insufficient even when present, the researchers found. 

In addition to increasing food insecurity, the study shows that the pandemic and accompanying containment measures have undermined several other aspects of household wellbeing. In all the countries, schools were closed during most or all of the survey period. Respondents also reported reduced access to health services, including prenatal care and vaccinations. Combined, these factors could have damaging long-term effects on children in particular, the researchers note. 

"The pandemic's economic shock in these countries, where most people depend on casual labor to feed their families, causes deprivations that have adverse consequences in the long term, including excess mortality," said study co-author Ashish Shenoy, a professor of agriculture and resource economics at the University of California, Davis.