Subscribe

Back

Who we are

With research staff from more than 70 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

researcher spotlight

David Spielman

David Spielman is the director of IFPRI’s Innovation Policy and Scaling Unit and has been with the institute since 2004. His research agenda covers a range of topics including agriculture and rural development policy; agricultural science, technology, and innovation; plant genetic resources and seed systems; agricultural extension and advisory services; and community-driven rural development.

Back

What we do

Since 1975, IFPRI’s research has been informing policies and development programs to improve food security, nutrition, and livelihoods around the world.

Research topics

Projects and impact

Food Security Portal

Modeling tools

What’s new

Where we work

Back

Where we work

IFPRI currently has more than 480 employees working in over 70 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

IFPRI Regional Programs

IFPRI Country and Regional Offices

Research by country and region

Subscribe

experts

Development Strategies and Governance

Khin Mar Linn

Research Analyst

Khin Mar Linn

Bio

Khin Mar Linn is a Research Analyst with the Development Strategies and Governance Unit, and is based at IFPRI-Yangon.

Development Strategies and Governance

Publications

Resource thumbnail

Working Paper

The state of food security and nutrition in Myanmar, 2021-2025: Findings from nine rounds of the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey

2026Tauseef, Salauddin; Linn, Khin Mar; Oo, Theingi; van Asselt, Joanna
Details

The state of food security and nutrition in Myanmar, 2021-2025: Findings from nine rounds of the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey

Persistent Hunger: Extreme hunger continued to affect nearly 3.5 percent of households in late 2025. Poor Adult Diet Quality: Over a quarter of adults (27.1 percent) lack adequate dietary diversity. Women’s diet quality has worsened faster than men’s over the past three years. Deteriorating diets of young children: Over 36.5 percent of 6-23 months and 24.3 percent of 6-59 months old children are without an adequately diverse diet, significantly higher than in previous years. Multiple Factors Affecting Risk & Resilience: Low assets, conflict, and high food prices drive insecurity; remittances reduce food-related risks. This working paper explores the state of food security and nutrition in Myanmar using nine rounds of nationally representative household panel data collected from December 2021 to October 2025. Overall, the state of food security and nutrition has deteriorated in Myanmar from 2021-2025. Nearly 3.5 percent of households were in moderate to severe hunger in July-October 2025, with low asset households disproportionately affected. Households with a low Food Consumption Score increased from 9.4 percent in December 2021-February 2022 to 14.2 percent in August-November 2023 and remained high at 16.2 percent in July-October 2025. Inadequate diet diversity among adults rose from 20.5 percent to 27.1 percent between December 2021-February 2022 and July-October 2025. Women saw a faster decline in diet quality during this time (8.7 percentage points increase in poor diet quality compared to 3.9 percentage points for men). Decreases in diet quality among adults were driven by lower consumption of animal sourced food. In the latest round of survey, children with poor diet quality increased compared to previous rounds – currently in 2025, 36.5 percent of 6-23 months and 24.3 percent of 6-59 months children are without an adequately diverse diet compared to 30.7 percent and 21.3 percent, respectively, in 2024. Similarly, 42.9 percent of children aged 6-23 months in Myanmar do not meet the Minimum Acceptable Diet (MAD), a composite indicator of meal frequency and dietary diversity, indicating widespread inadequacy in infant and young child feeding. 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 were particularly vulnerable. Rising food prices, conflict and physical insecurity also increase the likelihood of poor diet quality. Receiving remittances was a source of resilience; remittance-receiving households were 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 needed. 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.

Year published

2026

Authors

Tauseef, Salauddin; Linn, Khin Mar; Oo, Theingi; van Asselt, Joanna

Citation

Tauseef, Salauddin; Linn, Khin Mar; Oo, Theingi; and van Asselt, Joanna. 2026. The state of food security and nutrition in Myanmar, 2021-2025: Findings from nine rounds of the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey. Myanmar SSP Working Paper 76. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/182086

Country/Region

Myanmar

Keywords

Asia; South-eastern Asia; Food Security; Nutrition; Hunger; Households; Dietary Diversity; Food Consumption Statistics; Regression Analysis

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Working Paper

Resource thumbnail

Working Paper

Analyzing Early Childhood Development (ECD) in Yangon and rural Ayeyarwady: October – November 2023

2025Tauseef, Salauddin; Headey, Derek D.; Oo, Theingi; Linn, Khin Mar
Details

Analyzing Early Childhood Development (ECD) in Yangon and rural Ayeyarwady: October – November 2023

KEY FINDINGS • Support for learning: 79 percent of children received four or more stimulating activities, but only 20 percent had three or more books; fathers’ engagement with children (30 percent) lags behind mothers (81 percent). • Caregiver Reported Early Development Instruments (CREDI): the standardized score in the study sample was 58.4, which is lower than scores reported in similar studies from India (70.0), Tanzania (64.0), and Armenia (81.8) • Household inequalities: Asset-rich, food-secure households show higher ECD scores; severe food insecurity lowers scores by ~2 points. • Conflict and shocks: Migration and physical insecurity reduce ECD scores by 0.5-1.0 points. • Parental influences: Fathers’ education boosts ECD outcomes; maternal depression and low aspirations for girls reduce ECD outcomes. • Care quality: Inadequate care reduces ECD scores by 1.3 points; stunting lowers ECD scores by 0.8 points, while access to books and ECE increases ECD scores by 0.7 points.

Year published

2025

Authors

Tauseef, Salauddin; Headey, Derek D.; Oo, Theingi; Linn, Khin Mar

Citation

Tauseef, Salauddin; Headey, Derek D.; Oo, Theingi; and Linn, Khin Mar. 2025. Analyzing Early Childhood Development (ECD) in Yangon and rural Ayeyarwady: October – November 2023. Myanmar SSP Working Paper 71. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). https://hdl.handle.net/10568/176497

Country/Region

Myanmar

Keywords

Asia; South-eastern Asia; Child Development; Parental Behaviour; Household Income; Food Security; Migration; Conflicts

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Working Paper

Resource thumbnail

Working Paper

The state of food security and nutrition in Myanmar, 2021-2024: Findings from eight rounds of the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey

2025Tauseef, Salauddin; Linn, Khin Mar; Oo, Theingi
Details

The state of food security and nutrition in Myanmar, 2021-2024: Findings from eight rounds of the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey

This working paper explores the state of food security and nutrition in Myanmar using eight rounds of nationally representative household panel data collected from December 2021 to December 2024. Overall, the state of food security and nutrition has deteriorated in Myanmar from 2021-2024. More than three percent of households were in moderate to severe hunger in September-December 2024. Hunger was highest in Kachin (6.5 percent), followed by Kayah (6.3 percent) and Chin (6.0 percent) in the latest survey round. Households with a low Food Consumption Score increased from 9.4 percent in December 2021-February 2022 to 14.2 percent in August-November 2023 and remained high at 14.2 percent in October-December 2024. The shares in October-December 2024 were highest in Chin (34.6 percent), Kayah (25.4 percent), and Shan (19.3 percent). Inadequate diet diversity among adults rose from 20.5 percent to 26.0 percent between December 2021-February 2022 to October-December 2024. Women saw a faster decline in diet quality (7.3 percentage points increase in poor diet quality compared to 3.2 percentage points for men). Decreases in diet quality among adults were driven by lower consumption of animal sourced food and vegetables. In the latest round of the survey, 30.7 percent of all children aged 6-23 months and 21.3 percent of all children aged 6-59 months had inadequate diet quality. Of note during October-December 2024, urban households faced greater food insecurity than rural households, with higher hunger rates (3.5 percent vs. 2.8 percent), and lower dietary diversity among both adults (26.0 percent vs. 25.0 percent) and children aged 6–59 months (23.2 percent vs. 20.4 percent). 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 were particularly vulnerable. Rising food prices, conflict and physical insecurity increase the likelihood of poor diet quality. Receiving remittances was a source of resilience; remittance-receiving households were 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 gendersensitive 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.

Year published

2025

Authors

Tauseef, Salauddin; Linn, Khin Mar; Oo, Theingi

Citation

Tauseef, Salauddin; Linn, Khin Mar; and Oo, Theingi. 2025. The state of food security and nutrition in Myanmar, 2021-2024: Findings from eight rounds of the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey. Myanmar SSP Working Paper 67. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/175339

Country/Region

Myanmar

Keywords

Asia; South-eastern Asia; Food Security; Nutrition; Diet Quality; Income; Conflicts; Food Prices; Remittances

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Working Paper

Events

32nd International Conference of Agricultural Economists
IFPRI at External Event

 | 

August 2 to 7, 2024

32nd International Conference of Agricultural Economists

The triennial International Conference of Agricultural Economists (ICAE-2024), centred on the theme “Transformation Towards Sustainable Agri-Food Systems” is scheduled from August 2-7, 2024, in New Delhi, India. The conference offers a distinctive platform, providing a golden opportunity for the agricultural academic institutions and researchers to convene in person, exchange knowledge, and actively contribute to the […]