# **Table 4. Difference in food and non-food consumption per capita between the lean season and nonlean season waves** _Panel A: Food_

||Burkin|a Faso|Ni|ger|Sen|egal|All except C|had and Mali|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
||No|Full|No|Full|No|Full|No|Full|
||controls|controls|controls|controls|controls|controls|controls|controls|
|Lean season<br>wave|-0.1976***|-0.1544***|-0.0839**|-0.0877***|-0.0823**|-0.0799***|-0.1140***|-0.1133***|
||(0.0478)|(0.0321)|(0.0353)|(0.0270)|(0.0349)|(0.0188)|(0.0279)|(0.0160)|
|N|7016|6935|6020|5919|7153|7107|20189|19961|
|R-squared|0.0223|0.3853|0.0055|0.2656|0.0052|0.3961|0.0079|0.4252|

_Panel B: Non-food_

||Burkin|a Faso|Ni|ger|Sen|egal|All except C|had and Mali|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
||No|Full|No|Full|No|Full|No|Full|
||controls|controls|controls|controls|controls|controls|controls|controls|
|Lean season<br>wave|-0.1380**|-0.1053***|-0.0023|-0.0150|-0.0937*|-0.0939***|-0.0739*|-0.0630***|
||(0.0642)|(0.0265)|(0.0430)|(0.0209)|(0.0556)|(0.0219)|(0.0378)|(0.0136)|
|N|7017|6936|6020|5919|7153|7107|20190|19962|
|R-squared|0.0079|0.5973|0.0000|0.5778|0.0043|0.5817|0.0023|0.6411|

Note: * p<0.10, ** p<0.05, *** p<0.01. Standard errors clustered at the ‘grappe’ level in parentheses. Dependent variable is the log of total monetary consumption per capita; for food items in Panel A and for non-food items in Panel B. Individual-level sampling weights applied. ‘Full controls’ specifications include controls for the gender, age, and education level of the household head, household size, the dependency ratio, household walls material, household roof material, household floor material, access to electricity, access to improved drinking water, and access to improved sanitation as well as region fixed effects. Source: EHCVM and World Bank estimates.

Considering the specific food items in which the lean-season drop in consumption was concentrated indicates particularly extreme forms of seasonal deprivation. In particular, the difference between the lean and non-lean season waves in terms of expenditure on staple cereal goods was particularly large. Pooling the data from Burkina Faso, Niger, and Senegal, the seasonal difference in expenditure on cereal foods was as much as 15.2 percent without controls and 15.8 percent with controls (Table 5). Similar effects are seen when looking at the quantities of cereals consumed in the lean and non-lean season. At the same time, any differences in dietary diversity – captured by comparing the World Food Programme’s Food Consumption Score (FCS) – between the lean and non-lean season are far less clear cut.<sup>24</sup> These season-to-season changes in consumption do no match the more ‘typical’ ways in which households would cope with price and income shocks, whereby consumption of more expensive or nutritious food 24 The FCS measures dietary diversity by counting the number of days out of the last seven days in which a food from each food group was consumed, then aggregating across food groups using a weighted sum (WFP, 2008). Households with a FCS of less than 42 are said to have ‘poor or borderline’ food security. When Equation 1 is estimated with a dummy variable for households having poor or borderline food security as the dependent variable – using the pooled data from Burkina Faso, Niger, and Senegal – the difference between the lean season is only around 1.9 percentage points and is not statistically significant at the 5 percent level, with or without controls. For Burkina Faso, Niger, and Senegal, around 1 in 5 people live in households with poor or borderline food security as per the FCS, when pooling data from the two waves.

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