Background

Ten rounds of the Rural-Urban Food Security Survey (RUFSS) have been conducted between June 2020 and December 2021 to assess the impacts of Myanmar’s economic, political, and health crises on various dimensions of household welfare.

Key Findings

The severe economic impacts of COVID-19 on Myanmar’s economy have been accentuated by the recent political instability.

Amid extreme uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic, economic policymakers have struggled to respond to rapidly changing circumstances with appropriate speed and scale.

This policy note presents results from five rounds of a telephone survey with food vendors conducted in different rural and urban zones of the country, focusing on results from the last round completed.

To continue monitoring the economic and social impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on Myanmar’s diverse rural and urban communities, a multi-round large-scale community telephone survey is being conducted.

This study assesses the welfare impacts of COVID-19 on households in Myanmar by combining recent high-frequency telephone survey evidence for two specific rural and urban geographies with national-level survey-based simulations designed to assess

To better understand the economic and social impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on Myanmar’s diverse rural and urban communities, a multi-round large-scale community telephone survey is being conducted.

Between April and October 2020, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Michigan State University (MSU), with support from the United States Agency of International Development (USAID) and the Livelihoods and Food Security Fun

Myanmar had one of the lowest confirmed COVID-19 caseloads in the world in mid-2020 and was one of the few developing countries not projected to go into economic recession.

To better understand the economic and social impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on Myanmar’s diverse rural and urban communities, a large-scale community telephone survey was conducted.

It is feared that the COVID-19 pandemic will lead to widespread increases in global poverty and food insecurity and that these negative impacts will concentrate on the most vulnerable segments of the population (Swinnen and McDermott 2020).

Myanmar has been fortunate in thus far having one of the lowest caseloads of COVID-19 per population globally, with under 400 confirmed cases as of early August.

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a global economic crisis from which very few countries will be spared.

The COVID-19 crisis in Myanmar poses a very serious risk to the nutritional status of vulnerable populations, notably women and children, as well as poor urban populations and internally displaced persons.