Covid-19, Food Insecurity and Coping Strategies of the Extreme Poor in Bangladesh

Abstract

This paper aims to assess food insecurity during the Covid-19
pandemic and coping strategies of the extreme poor in
Bangladesh. Food security was measured in terms of shortage
of food during the week before survey, with 532 households
sampled from 9 districts. Results show that nearly 91% of the
households faced a medium to severe level of food insecurity
during the pandemic: about 37% of the households suffered
severe food-insecurity, while roughly 52% suffered moderate
food insecurity. To cope, nearly three-fourths of the food secure
households used regular income, food-stock, and savings to
access food. The severely food-insecure households adopted
mostly borrowing strategies (80% of the households). The
Logit model-based results show that the odds ratios of severe
food insecurity were over 1, suggesting a deterioration of food
insecurity for households which were led by females, had a
special needs member, had a higher number of family members,
suffered from previous shocks, and had previous loans.