# **3 Data**

The primary data source for our analysis is the first round of the COVID-19 Panel Phone Survey of Households, collected by the Mali National Statistical Office, Institut National de la Statistique (INSTAT), in partnership with the World Bank.<sup>9</sup> The survey is part of a regional effort to generate high-quality data on the coronavirus pandemic and its impacts in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) member countries. In Mali, the first round of the survey of Households was implemented between the end of May and early June 2020, and included 2,270 households. These households were drawn randomly from the _Enquˆete Harmonis ́ee des Conditions de Vie des M ́enages_ (EHCVM) sample, which was conducted between October 2018 and July 2019 in a collaboration between INSTAT and the World Bank. The COVID-19 Panel Phone Survey of Households sample is nationally representative, representative of Bamako, and representative of both urban and rural areas.<sup>10</sup> The survey uses a relatively short instrument focusing on a subset of modules from the EHCVM and new modules on knowledge, perception, and behavior relating to the coronavirus pandemic. Data collection of additional rounds of the COVID-19 Panel Phone Survey of Households is ongoing and subsequent analysis can and should investigate the persistence of effects over a longer period of time.<sup>11</sup> The EHCVM sample itself covered 8,390 households across Mali and is nationally representative, representative of Bamako, and representative of both urban and rural areas. The survey relies on a multi-module instrument covering topics including a household’s socio-economic characteristics, timeuse, production activities, and welfare indicators such as consumption expenditure and food security. We use sampling weights derived from the 2018 EHCVM sampling frame and adjusted for response rates in the COVID-19 Panel Phone Survey of Households. These sampling weights are applied both in our descriptive statistics and regression estimates.

## **3.1 Measuring Food Security**

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) defines food security as existing, “when all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (FAO, 1996, 2009). Although this definition is widely accepted, consistently measuring food security based on this definition is a considerable challenge (Carletto _et al._ , 2013).

In this study, we use the FAO’s Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) as primary outcome of interest. The FIES aims to measure food insecurity based on the direct experiences of people relating to food security (Ballard _et al._ , 2013; Smith _et al._ , 2017). This experience-based measure of food security

> 9Publicly available at `https://microdata.worldbank.org/index.php/catalog/3725/study-description` .

> 10Since the COVID-19 Panel Phone Survey of Households relies on phone interviews, the sampled households include only those who reported a valid phone number during the 2018 EHCVM survey. In some contexts this could generate selection bias. In Mali however, mobile phone technology use is high. Roughly 90 percent of the households surveyed in 2018 provided at least one phone number.

> 11Although recent political events in Mali (See here) might confound any effects captured with later rounds of COVID-19 phone surveys.

8