In this paper, we estimate the impacts of these flood events on household welfare outcomes in the period following the floods, including the impacts on food consumption expenditures, caloric intake, and the food consumption score. The latter is a measure of dietary quality developed by the World Food Programme that is based on dietary diversity (World Food Programme, 2008). Further, we are interested in determining which factors helped households minimize the negative impact of floods on welfare; we focus particularly on potential household risk-coping strategies as well as access to social safety nets. Our analysis relies on a multi-topic, panel household survey that was implemented by the Malawi National Statistical Office in November-December 2015, and that tracked and re-interviewed approximately 600 households in Southern Malawi that had previously been interviewed by the national Integrated Household Panel Survey (IHPS) in 2010 and 2013 under the World Bank Living Standards Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) initiative. Southern Malawi showed great variability in the extent and intensity of floods, and the existence of the pre-flood IHPS infrastructure in the country, as well as the ability to link all available rounds of household survey data to publicly available geospatial biophysical and agro-climatic data, created a unique opportunity to study the impact of a natural disaster.

The paper contributes to the literature in three main ways. First, it provides direct evidence of the impact of a severe weather event on household food consumption measures using a panel data set, and is one of a very limited number of studies to do so. Second, we evaluate the impacts of flood events on a range of consumption measures; doing so enables us to highlight that the primary impact of the floods was to reduce the quality of the food consumption basket rather than quantity consumed per se. This result has important policy implications; increasing the accessibility to a wider range of food groups in response to natural disasters can significantly increase dietary quality. Third, we are able to document the importance of three social safety net programs – direct food aid, school feeding programs<sup>2</sup> , and Malawi Social Action Fund (MASAF) assistance for work – with implications for how such programs may be made more effective in responding to natural disasters in the future.

The results show that while crop production was much lower in areas severely affected by the floods, drops in food consumption expenditures and calories per capita were less dramatic. However, food consumption scores were significantly lower for households located in both medium- and high-affected flood areas. At the same time, while the floods did lead to lower food consumption outcomes for some households, many were able to shield consumption outcomes from production losses. Access to social safety nets increased food consumption outcomes, particularly for those in moderately affected areas. However, we note that the proportion of households with access to certain safety net programs declined in 2015 versus 2013, suggesting that linking these programs more closely to disaster relief efforts could substantially improve welfare outcomes during and after a natural disaster. Finally, risk-coping variables, including financial accounts, access to off-farm income sources, and adult children living away from home, were generally not effective in mitigating negative impacts of the floods.

> 2 The specific programs captured under “school feeding programs” were the School Feeding Programme, free distribution of Likuni Phala to children and mothers, and supplemental feeding for malnourished children at a nutritional rehabilitation unit. The most frequent of these three is by far the School Feeding Programme.

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