survey is very similar in its relative ranking of governorates based on food access as compared to the face-to-face Emergency Food and Nutrition Security Assessment that was undertaken during the survey period.<sup>20</sup> Additionally, the regions that the WFP survey identifies as receiving the most assistance roughly align with the population-level estimates of the share receiving food assistance.<sup>21</sup>

# **4. Summary Statistics of Food Assistance and Food Access**

Table 1 reports average characteristics from the mVAM survey and illustrates a dire food security situation in Yemen over the course of the conflict. The share of respondents with a poor FCS, as defined by the WFP, was approximately 20 percent; the average prevalence of the food coping strategies collected were between 52 and 68 percent; households consumed fruit, vegetables, and protein less than half the days of the previous week and primarily relied on staples; and approximately one-third of the respondents received food assistance in the past month.<sup>22</sup> The majority of food assistance takes the form of in-kind assistance, and the vast majority of food assistance is being provided by the WFP.<sup>23</sup> Table 1 further demonstrates how food access has changed over the course of the conflict. The estimates demonstrate that food consumption and food coping strategies were already poor in 2015. However, measures of food access continued to worsen in 2016 and 2017 before improving in 2018.

Importantly, the data allow us to further report food access and food assistance by each region’s 2017 IPC classification.<sup>24</sup> Figure 2 reports the average FCS, rCSI, and the average share of respondents that received food assistance in each of the four different IPC classifications in the 2017 IPC announcement. The figure reports the averages of the variables in the months immediately before the 2017 IPC announcement.

There are three notable patterns apparent in Figure 2. First, the regions that were classified with the least severe food emergency in the 2017 IPC announcement (IPC 2) had significantly better food access than the rest of the country. For example, IPC 2 regions had an average FCS that was 31 percent higher and an average rCSI that was 75 percent lower than IPC 3 regions.

> Second, food access was very similar in regions with an IPC classification that was more severe than IPC 2. Both the average FCS and rCSI are nearly identical in all these regions and

> 20See Appendix 7. The relative ranking of governorates based on the share of respondents with either a poor or borderline FCS is similar, and the levels are nearly identical for a large number of governorates. However, in governorates that indicated the worst food access in both the mVAM and the EFSNA, the share of respondents with a poor or borderline FCS was higher in the EFSNA.

> 21See Appendix 8. Importantly, the WFP survey was not used as an input to the population-level estimates (IPC 2018). Also, the districts which are different between the two estimates tend to be districts that are large in area, but small in population (e.g., districts in Al Jawf, etc.).

> 22Table 1 only reports food assistance statistics from January 2017 and on, which was when the governoratelevel estimates begin in the publicly available data. However, the national share of assistance is reported since September 2015, and that data is reported in Figure 3a.

> 23The share of the mobile phone-using population receiving aid from the WFP is higher than the share reporting receiving food assistance because the averages are reported over different time periods. The average share of food assistance is reported between January 2017 and July 2018, whereas the breakdown of assistance by form and whether it was from the WFP was only added to the survey in April 2018.

> 24See Appendix 1 for the regional classification.

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