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This paper examines the continuing effects of COVID-19 and exposure to weather extremes on income, dietary, and migration outcomes in rural Guatemala. We rely on a comprehensive longitudinal survey of 1,612 smallholder farmers collected over three survey rounds in 2019, 2020, and 2021. We find improvements in incomes, food security, and dietary diversity in 2021 relative to 2020, but with levels still below pre-pandemic ones in 2019. We also find a substantial increase in the intention to emigrate that was not observed in the onset of the pandemic. In terms of the channels mediating the variations in dietary diversity and migration intentions, income shocks seem to have played a role, in contrast to direct exposure to the virus, local mobility restrictions, and food market disruptions. Importantly, households exposed to ETA and IOTA tropical storms, in addition to COVID-19, were considerably more prone to exhibit larger increases in the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecure episodes and larger decreases in their diet quality. The study provides novel evidence on vulnerable households' wellbeing in the aftermath of a global crisis, including the effects of compound shocks. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1; Feed the Future Initiative; 1 Fostering Climate-Resilient and Sustainable Food Supply; 2 Promoting Healthy Diets and Nutrition for all; 3 Building Inclusive and Efficient Markets, Trade Systems, and Food Industry ; MTID

In early 2020, Guatemala reacted swiftly to the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic. It was one of the first countries in Latin America to impose strict measures to contain the spread of infection, including travel restrictions and a six-month nationwide lockdown beginning March 21 (eight days after its first reported case), comprising a temporary halt of activities in the private and public sectors, suspension of public transportation, and mobility restrictions, with a strict curfew from 6 p.m. to 5 a.m. According to the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT), the country's measures were among the top five in Latin America in terms of stringency. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI4; CRP4 ; MTID; DGO; A4NH ; CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH)

Reducing urban-rural gaps in child health and nutrition is one of the most difficult challenges faced by many countries. This paper evaluates the impact of the Nutrition Improvement Program (NIP), a large-scale school meal program in rural China, on the health and nutritional status of compulsory education students aged 6-16. We use data from multiple rounds of the China Health and Nutrition Survey between 2004-2015 and implement a quasi-experimental approach exploiting cross-county variations in program implementation. We find that NIP participation is, on average, associated with a higher height-for-age z-score in the order of 0.22-0.42 standard deviations. The impacts are larger among students in a better health condition but small or not significant among the most disadvantaged. We do not observe heterogeneous effects across several individual and household characteristics. We also do not find significant effects on Body Mass Index-for-age and weight-for-age z scores. The results suggest that NIP partially improved students' health over the first years of implementation, but more support is needed to achieve broader impacts that effectively reach all vulnerable students. Several robustness checks support our findings. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1; DCA; 2 Promoting Healthy Diets and Nutrition for all; 5 Strengthening Institutions and Governance ; MTID

AbstractAir pollution is a major environmental issue in China. This paper exploits the relocation of two major power plants in a large Chinese city as a quasi-natural experiment to examine the effect of changes in the quality of the environment on the housing market. We use an extensive transaction dataset of new apartment units in the affected and neighboring areas. We find that the plants' closure is associated with a 12–14% increase in prices and 13–31% rise in the volume of transactions in neighborhoods within five kilometers of the plants. We further observe a higher change in prices among more expensive houses. The estimated monthly aggregate effect of the closures on the local housing market is over 50 million US dollars during the first 2 years after the relocations.