wash their hands more than usual, avoid greetings with physical contact, and avoid gatherings with more than 10 people). However, and perhaps surprisingly, although most of the sample did reduce the number of times they went to the market or grocery store and were not able to stockpile more food than usual, we do not see a discernible difference in these reported behaviors between urban and rural households. Although these descriptive insights highlight reasons why maintaining food security may be generally challenging in Mali, extensive margin changes in these behaviors do not explain differences in pandemicrelated food security challenges between urban and rural areas. As documented in other contexts, and as suggested by the Google Mobility Data, price effects could influence behavior on the intensive margin. More research is needed to fully understand these dynamics.

Figure 4 shows self-reported estimates of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on economic outcomes using information from our COVID-19 phone panel survey.<sup>8</sup> Most households, with no statistical difference between urban and rural areas, report that a household member has lost their job and report lost income due to the coronavirus pandemic. Slightly less than half of households, again with no statistical difference between urban and rural areas, feel at risk for losing more income in the future due to the pandemic. This highlights the magnitude and range of the economic shock associated with the pandemic. Roughly 16 percent of urban households, and only 5 percent of rural households experienced struggles to pay rent due to the pandemic. Although a similar pattern holds for accessing water or electricity, with 24 percent of urban households and 10 percent of rural households reporting struggles due to the pandemic, we see no reported difference in struggles to buy food between urban and rural areas. This essentially mirrors the finding documented in Figure 3. In addition, we see relatively small but statistically significant differences in the ability to save money and invest in durable goods between urban and rural areas, with slightly more reported disruptions in urban areas.

Although we cannot be sure of the exact mechanism with our present data, our descriptive results suggest several possibilities. First, and as documented in Figure 4, although extensive margin changes in access to food do not explain the estimated differences in food security between urban and rural areas, it remains possible that intensive margin changes in food access and consumption explain the differential effects of the pandemic on food security between urban and rural areas. Future research, similar to the work of Narayanan and Saha (2020), should be completed in more contexts around the world. Second, according to our self-reported accounts, the coronavirus pandemic seems to have had a much more salient and direct effect on the ability to pay rent, access water or electricity, save money, and invest in durable goods than access to food in Mali’s urban areas compared to rural areas. Despite this self-reported account and as we will discuss in Section 5, we find that households in urban areas experience more food insecurity due to the pandemic than households in rural areas based on a more detailed and specific measurement tool. Future research, using more detailed information on food prices in Mali, will do well to investigate the specific mechanisms that drive these differential effects.

> 8Table A2 in the Supplemental Appendix provides additional details on the statistics reported in Figure 4.

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