IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jfpoli/v131y2025ics0306919225000235.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Coping or hoping? Livelihood diversification and food insecurity in the COVID-19 pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Furbush, Ann M.
  • Josephson, Anna
  • Kilic, Talip
  • Michler, Jeffrey D.

Abstract

We examine the relationship between livelihood diversification and food insecurity amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analysis uses household panel data from Ethiopia, Malawi, and Nigeria in which the first round was collected immediately prior to the pandemic and extends through multiple rounds of monthly data collection during the pandemic. Using this pre- and post-outbreak data, and guided by a pre-analysis plan, we estimate conditional associations between livelihood diversification and food insecurity. Our results do not support the hypothesis that livelihood diversification correlates with household resilience. Though income diversification may serve as an effective coping mechanism for small-scale shocks, we find that for a disaster on the scale of the pandemic this strategy is not effective. Policymakers looking to prepare for the increased occurrence of large-scale disasters will need to grapple with the fact that coping strategies that gave people hope in the past may fail them as they try to cope with the future.

Suggested Citation

  • Furbush, Ann M. & Josephson, Anna & Kilic, Talip & Michler, Jeffrey D., 2025. "Coping or hoping? Livelihood diversification and food insecurity in the COVID-19 pandemic," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jfpoli:v:131:y:2025:i:c:s0306919225000235
    DOI: 10.1016/j.foodpol.2025.102819
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306919225000235
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.foodpol.2025.102819?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    COVID-19 pandemic; Coping strategies; Food security; Pre-analysis plan; Sub-Saharan Africa;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F6 - International Economics - - Economic Impacts of Globalization
    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
    • O2 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy
    • Q18 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Agricultural Policy; Food Policy; Animal Welfare Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jfpoli:v:131:y:2025:i:c:s0306919225000235. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/foodpol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.