here is that we are failing to detect a true, statistically significant, and economically meaningful effect because we lack sufficient observations with sufficient variation. We cannot conclusively rule out this explanation because we did not conduct _ex ante_ power calculations as part of our preanalysis plan. We failed to do this for two reasons. First, it was not clear what values should be used in a power calculation for means and standard deviations in the control group nor what a reasonable expected effect size would be. Second, and quite honestly, we did not think it necessary given the large size of the data collection effort. In total, the pre- and post-outbreak LSMS-ISA data sets contain more than 84,000 observations. Country-specific regressions contain between 3,000 and 15,000 observations. In writing the pre-analysis plan, we did not expect a lack of power to be something we would eventually need to address. Given the evidence on how misleading _ex post_ power calculations can be, we have not done this sort of calculation (Hoenig and Heisey, 2001; Gelman, 2019). Our failure to conduct _ex ante_ power calculations means we cannot provide definitive evidence against the explanation that our analysis lacks power. However, we believe that the large number of observations used in the analysis makes the lack of power an unlikely story.

A final explanation, and the one we find most compelling, is that in the face of a global pandemic and related government restrictions, livelihood diversification was not an effective coping strategy. This is true both in terms of using livelihood diversification as an _ex ante_ strategy, to prepare for a potential shock, and an _ex post_ strategy, to react to a realized shock. Health concerns and government restrictions to stop the spread of the virus may have stripped resource-rich households of their comparative advantage and equalized the vulnerability of income-diverse and income-specialized households. Or perhaps moving away from subsistence farming left households unable to access sufficient food during times of crisis, leaving income-diverse households worse off. In the end, we do not find evidence that income diverse households were better equipped to cope with the socioeconomic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike transitory or localized shocks, which are frequently the setting for research on livelihood diversification as a coping strategy, the pandemic lasted several years and occurred at a global scale. To combat the spread of the virus, governments imposed restrictions on travel and business operations, which may have limited a household’s ability to diversify income in response to the pandemic. The evidence presented in this paper suggests that livelihood diversification is ill-fit as a coping strategy for households preparing for or reacting to a shock of the immensity and length of the pandemic.

# **5 Conclusions**

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the challenges faced by households in Sub-Saharan Africa. Much of the existing literature suggests that income diversification bolsters household resilience to shocks and improves household welfare after the experience of unanticipated events. However, the focus of this literature is on weather shocks and localized conflict events and so does not capture the nature of a large-scale disaster, like the COVID-19 pandemic. With this study, we seek to fill 17