The State Of Food Security And Nutrition In Myanmar Findings From The Myanmar Household Welfare Survey 2021 2022

In this research note, we provide an overview of the state of food security and nutrition in Myanmar using a recently collected household dataset. We examine food security using a household hunger scale and a food consumption score. To examine the state of nutrition, we examine the diet quality of individuals across Myanmar for three separate but important sections of population: (1) adults (18+ years), (2) women of reproductive age (15-49 years), and (3) children (6-23 and 6-59 months). We explore these indicators using three rounds of the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey (MHWS) collected over the phone in the first three quarters of 2022 – hereafter Q1, Q2 and Q3 – among over 12,000 households in 310 townships of Myanmar. MWHS is a nationally, urban/rural and state/region representative phone survey (MAPSA 2022a). We use standard food security and diet diversity measures for each of the three subpopulations to examine trends over the three rounds as well as explore heterogeneity with respect to gender, location of residence, and asset and income-based welfare indicators. We also look at disaggregated consumption of the different food groups that constitute the diet diversity measures to investigate the change in the consumption pattern of individuals. Finally, we use regression analysis to look at predictors of food insecurity and inadequate diet diversity, including household wealth and income, self reported shocks, food prices, and household characteristics.

This working paper explores the state of food security and nutrition in Myanmar using 5 rounds of nationally representative household panel data collected from December 2021 to June 2023. Overall, the state of food security and nutrition has deteriorated in Myanmar in 2022-23. More than 3 percent of households were in moderate to severe hunger in April-June 2023. Hunger was highest in Chin (10.1 percent), Rakhine (7.6 percent), and Kayin (5.9 percent). Households with a low food consumption score increased from 9.4 percent in December 2021-February 2022 to 17.7 percent in April-June 2023. The shares in April-June were highest in Chin (48.4 percent), Kayah (27 percent), and Kachin (22 percent). Inadequate diet diversity among adults rose from 20.6 percent to 27.1 percent over the same period. Women saw a faster decline in diet quality from December-February 2022 to April-June 2022 (9.1 percentage points increase in poor diet quality vs 3.8 percentage points for men). Decreases in diet quality among adults are driven by lower consumption of milk and dairy products as well as Vitamin A rich fruits, meat, fish, and eggs. 40 percent of all children aged 6-23 months and nearly a quarter (24.9 percent) of children aged 6-59 months had inadequate diet quality in the latest round of survey. Regression analysis reveals low income and limited assets to be important risk factors for food security and adequate diet quality. Wage workers and low wage communities are found to be particularly vulnerable. Rising food prices, conflict and physical insecurity increase the likelihood of poor diet quality. Receiving remittances is a source of resilience; remittance-receiving households are less likely to experience hunger or poor dietary diversity at the household, adult, and child level. To avert a full-blown nutrition crisis in Myanmar, effective multisectoral steps are required to protect nutritionally vulnerable populations. Expanded implementation of nutrition- and gender-sensitive social protection programs, including maternal and child cash transfers, particularly to vulnerable groups is called for. Further, given the importance of remittances as an effective coping mechanism, supporting migration and the flow of remittances would help to improve the welfare of the Myanmar population.

This working paper explores the state of food security and nutrition in Myanmar using 6 rounds of nationally representative household panel data collected from December 2021 to November 2023. Overall, the state of food security and nutrition has deteriorated in Myanmar in 2022-23. More than 3 percent of households were in moderate to severe hunger in September-November 2023. Hunger was highest in Chin (8.7 percent) and Tanintharyi (7.0 percent). Households with a low food consumption score increased from 9.4 percent in December 2021-February 2022 to 15.9 percent in October-December 2022 and remained high at 14.4 percent in September-November 2023. The shares in September-November 2023 were highest in Chin (38.2 percent), Kayah (22.4 percent), and Magway (20 percent). Inadequate diet diversity among adults rose from 20.6 percent to 30.9 percent over December 2021-February 2022 to October-December 2022, with an increase of 5.9 percentage points in the past one year. Women saw a faster decline in diet quality from December-February 2022 to September-November 2023 (12.1 percentage points increase in poor diet quality vs 8.4 percentage points for men). Decreases in diet quality among adults are driven by lower consumption of milk and dairy products as well as Vitamin A rich fruits, meat, fish, and eggs. 34.5 percent of all children aged 6-23 months and nearly a quarter (23.6 percent) of all children aged 6-59 months had inadequate diet quality in the latest round of survey. Regression analysis reveals low income and limited assets to be important risk factors for food security and adequate diet quality. Wage workers and low wage communities are found to be particularly vulnerable. Rising food prices, conflict and physical insecurity increase the likelihood of poor diet quality. Receiving remittances is a source of resilience; remittance-receiving households are less likely to experience hunger or poor dietary diversity at the household, adult, and child level. To avert a full-blown nutrition crisis in Myanmar, effective multisectoral steps are required to protect nutritionally vulnerable populations. Expanded implementation of nutrition- and gender sensitive social protection programs, including maternal and child cash transfers, particularly to vulnerable groups is called for. Further, given the importance of remittances as an effective coping mechanism, supporting migration and the flow of remittances would help to improve the welfare of the Myanmar population.

The state of food security and nutrition has deteriorated in Myanmar in 2022. Four percent of households were in moderate to severe hunger in October/December 2022. Hunger was highest in Chin (10%), Mon (6.8%), and Kayin (6%). Households with a low food consumption score increased from 9.4% in December 2021/February 2022 to 15.7% in October/December 2022. The shares in October/December were highest in Chin (48.3%), Kayin (23.1%), and Magway (22.7%). Inadequate diet diversity among adults rose from 20.6% to 25.1% over the same period with rates higher for women, especially in rural areas. Decreases in diet quality among adults is driven by lower consumption of milk and dairy products as well as Vitamin A rich fruits, meat, fish, and eggs. More than a third of all children aged 6-23 months and 15.9% of all children aged 24-59 months have inadequate diet quality. Regression analysis reveals low income and limited assets to be important risk factors for food security and adequate diet quality. Wage workers and low wage communities are found to be particularly vulnerable. Rising food prices, conflict and physical insecurity increase the likelihood of poor diet quality. Receiving remittances is a source of resilience; remittance-receiving households are less likely to experience hunger or poor dietary diversity at the household, adult, and child level.

The first round of the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey (MHWS), a nationally and regionally representative phone survey, was implemented between December 2021 and February 2022 with 12,100 households. This report discusses its findings related to shocks, livelihoods, coping strategies and food security. We find that almost 1 in 5 households experience physical insecurity, more than 1 in 10 were negatively affected by climatic shocks, and 3 in 5 experienced sickness or death of household members in the past three months. Two thirds of households reported a lower income in the beginning of 2022 compared to 12 months earlier, indicating widespread impacts of the pandemic, the political crisis, and the ensuing economic crisis. Ninety percent of households applied at least one coping strategy to deal with lack of food or money during the past month. More than half of all households lowered food and non-food expenditures. A large number of households also used more dramatic coping strategies, including high-risk income generating activities (4 percent), children working (3 percent of households), migration (1 percent), or selling of the dwelling or land (1 percent). Even though data were collected in the beginning of 2022 after the monsoon harvest and thus a relatively favorable time of the year for food security, still 9 percent of the households did not have an adequate food consumption pattern and 4 percent suffered from moderate or severe hunger. Violent events in the township, self-reported physical insecurity, climatic and health shocks all are strongly associated with negative outcomes for income, coping and food security. Chin and Kayah state experienced high levels of violence and consistently perform worse across the range of welfare indicators considered.

The second round of the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey (MHWS), a nationally and regionally representative phone survey, was implemented between April and June 2022. It follows from a first round that was carried out between December 2021 and February 2022. This report discusses the findings from the second round related to shocks, livelihoods, coping strategies and food security. We find that 19.6 percent of households reported security and climatic shocks in the three months prior to their interview. Further, there is an uptick in reported crime, violence,and insecurity across communities in the second round, compared with the first. Theft is also an important issue, with 3.2 percent of households burglarized. Fifty-five percent of households report a lower income in the beginning of 2022 compared to 12 months earlier. Eighty-three percent of households use at least one coping strategy to meet daily needs during the month prior to the survey. The three most common copying strategies are spending savings, reducing nonfood expenditure, and reducing food expenditure. Seventeen percent of households have poor or borderline food consumption, more than in round one (R1), when the share was 9.4 percent. This change is in part driven by a decrease in animal-sourced food consumption, from 5.0 days a week in R1, to 3.9 days a week in round two (R2). Finally, hunger is an issue for 4.0 percent of households. Regression analysis reveals that self-reported community insecurity and climatic shocks are strongly associated with negative outcomes for income, coping, and food security. Finally, households in Kayah and Chin are the most vulnerable; they report insecurity, violence, and crime in their communities and compared to the other states/regions are more likely to have income loss, poor food consumption and hunger.

The social protection system in Myanmar has remained at a rudimentary level for the past decade, with policies scattered and fragmented across various government departments, and serving only a fraction of the eligible population. The government allocated only 0.8 percent of its expenditure to social protection constraining its ability to expand to vulnerable groups leaving households to rely on informal forms of safety nets against idiosyncratic and covariate shocks, and life-course contingencies (Niño-Zarazúa & Tarp 2021). Only 13.8 percent of the population received any form of social protection according to the 2017 MLCS, leaving much of the poor, which is about one-third of the population, out of the scope of protection. After the military takeover in 2021, government provision of social protection faced a complete collapse with near zero allocation to the population (MAPSA 2022c). In the face of the double predicament of the COVID-19 pandemic and coup, any form of anti-poverty investment should effectively target the poor based on observable and verifiable characteristics. In this research note, we explore some promising indicators which can be used by implementing agencies to effectively target the poor. We use data from the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey (MHWS) collected over the phone during July and August of 2022. The survey was conducted among 12,000 households in 310 townships of Myanmar. The MHWS is a nationally, urban/rural and state/region representative phone survey (MAPSA 2022a). The household survey questionnaire collected information on a wide variety of topics such as household composition, occupation, education, dwelling characteristics, assets, income, and agriculture.

The third round of the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey (MHWS), a nationally and regionally representative phone survey, was implemented between July and August 2022. It followed from a second round that was conducted between April and June 2022 and a first round that was carried out between December 2021 and February 2022. This report discusses the findings from the third round related to shocks, coping strategies, and income poverty. During the third round of data collection, the security situation in Myanmar continued to decline. Increasingly, households felt insecure in their communities, as reported by 21 percent of rural households and 25 percent of urban households, an increase compared to previous rounds. This is because crime and violence continued to increase, affecting 10 and 8 percent of communities, respectively. Further, 6 percent of households were directly affected, either through violence against a household member, robbery, or appropriation and/or destruction of their assets. Households also continued to earn less income. In July and August of 2022, 46 percent of households reported lower income compared to the previous year. Disruptions in banking, internet, and electricity also negatively impact household wellbeing and livelihoods. Further, households struggled to receive medical services. Finally, while school attendance recovered, it was still under 50 percent in some states/regions. Eighty-two percent of households used at least one coping strategy to meet daily needs during the month prior to the third-round survey. The three most common coping strategies used were spending savings, reducing non-food expenditure, and reducing food expenditure. Further, some households exhausted some or all of their coping strategies. Finally, income poverty increased during the third round; 62 percent of households were income poor. Casual wage earning and asset poor households were particularly vulnerable. Compared to the other states/regions, households in Kayah and Chin were the most vulnerable. They were more likely to be impacted by conflict, have income loss, and be income poor. Households in Rakhine, Kachin, and Tanintharyi were also vulnerable; more than 70 percent of households in those regions were income poor.