and there should be no differences in the households surveyed in the months before and the months after the capture of the capital if the survey was conducted as planned (World Bank 2017). However, enumerators might have both consciously and unconsciously avoided more dangerous areas, which might have affected the representativeness of the sample.

Despite this potential challenge, there is little evidence that sampling was significantly affected. The sampling was reported to have been carried out as planned- all enumeration areas and initial households to interview were selected approximately a year before the city was captured, none of the enumeration areas were replaced, and there were no reports of difficulties in completing the survey in the final quarter. Also, there is little difference in relatively fixed household characteristics between households surveyed prior to the capture to those surveyed after, corroborating the reports of the sampling not being significantly affected.

Given this setting, this article focuses on the evolution of household expenditure following the capture, as well as the ability of households to cope with the shock. Following the capture of Sana’a, one cannot reject the hypothesis that average expenditure did not initially change in the first month. However, by the third month following the capture, expenditure had significantly dropped in the capital relative to the rest of the country.

Importantly, the timing of the change in expenditure varied based on pre-existing household characteristics. Households where the head had not completed primary school immediately decreased their expenditure, and this decline remained for the rest of the time period under analysis. Whereas, households where the head finished primary school were able to maintain their expenditure in October, but decreased their expenditure by December. Although the household survey did not collect information on savings, this evolution of expenditure is consistent with better-off households being able to utilize savings to maintain expenditure, but other households having to sacrifice expenditure and immediately utilize other coping strategies.

Additionally, this article analyzes a number of different types of coping strategies that households employed during this time. First, less educated households, who were not able to maintain their expenditure immediately following the capture of the city, significantly increased their purchases using credit from local stores. The increase in these types of arrangements likely helped these households at least initially maintain their food consumption following the shock.

Second, there was a large change in the nature of employment in the city that began immediately after the capture of the city. There is some evidence of a decline in household wage income, but little evidence of a change in the overall number of households that reported working in the past week. Rather, there was a large increase in the share of households that turned to self-employment following the capture, and the share turning to self-employment continued to increase throughout the occupation. The results are consistent with households turning to self-employment as a way to cope with the poor economic climate, as the earnings of self-owned enterprises declined and the vast majority did not earn enough to reach the poverty line following the capture.

Third, there was a significant worsening in both the quantity and quality of food that was consumed during this time period. Initially, there were not large changes in micro and macro3