access in IPC 4 regions demonstrated above.

And third, as discussed above, the time following the 2017 IPC announcement was a very turbulent time in Yemen that affected all households (see Figure 1). The strong conflict-related shocks in the rest of 2017 and the beginning of 2018 might have had much stronger adverse impacts on access to food had there not been an increase in the share receiving food assistance following the 2017 IPC announcement, and this allowed households only to maintain food access. Additionally, it is possible that these shocks could have impacted IPC 4 regions more than the rest of the country given potentially more vulnerable households, and this impact could further have neutralized whatever additional increase in assistance was targeted to those regions.

Although all three of the above explanations could each contribute to the lack of a stronger and more immediate impact on food access, we are able to find additional empirical support for the last explanation. Given data and information constraints, it is not possible to estimate the impact of all the conflict-related shocks that affected the country. However, Tandon and Vishwanath (2020) were able to demonstrate that the complete air and sea blockade in November 2017 harmed food access and access to basic services using the individual-level data from the mVAM survey that month.<sup>39</sup> Using that same individual data from the November 2017 mVAM, we are able to demonstrate that the blockade did have stronger adverse consequences on IPC 4 regions than the rest of the country. Specifically, we estimate:

# (2)

_ln_ ( _Food_ _~~A~~ ccesshrd_ ) = _ρr_ + _β_ 1 _IPC_ 4 _r_ + _β_ 2 _Post_ _~~B~~ lockadehrd_ + _β_ 3 _Post_ _~~B~~ lockadehrd∗IPC_ ~~4~~ _r_ + _εhrd_ where _Food_ _~~A~~ ccess_ denotes either the household FCS or rCSI; _Post_ _~~B~~ lockade_ is an indicator equaling one if the household was interviewed after November 6th, which is the day the blockade began; and _h_ , _r_ , and _d_ refer to household, governorate, and day of interview respectively.<sup>40</sup> Similar to specification (1), estimates of _β_ 2 denote the percent increase in food access following the blockade in all non-IPC 4 regions, and estimates of _β_ 3 denote the additional percent increase in IPC 4 regions.

Additionally, the November 2017 survey also included a special module on access to basic services. Thus, we also estimate specifications that use indicators equaling one if the household was experiencing deprivations in access to electricity, water, and municipal garbage collection as the dependent variables. Lastly, we also estimate a specification using an indicator equaling one if the household suffered from three or more of the four deprivations measured (including poor FCS) simultaneously as the dependent variable.

Estimates of specification (2) are presented in Table 4. Consistent with Tandon and Vishwanath (2020), the estimates demonstrate that both food access and access to basic services did

> 39The analysis above relied on monthly summary statistics at the governorate level as opposed to the individual-level data. Special permission was obtained to use the one month of individual-level data.

> 40Given the use of a single month of individual-level data, the governorate fixed effects absorb the conflict variables that were used as controls in specification (1).

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