Coping with COVID-19 shocks in rural Nepal

Kierstin Ekstrom; Sarah Janzen; Nicholas Magnan

doi:10.1002/aepp.13383

Coping with COVID-19 shocks in rural Nepal

Kierstin Ekstrom
, Sarah Janzen
, Nicholas Magnan

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

We examine shocks experienced by rural Nepali households during the COVID-19 pandemic. Households primarily experienced income and price shocks during a government-imposed lockdown. During this time, households managed to effectively protect consumption, and mostly relied on credit (26%), asset sales (10%) and savings (8%). Debt levels nearly doubled, with limited changes to savings. We then leverage a long-term randomized control trial (RCT) to assess whether beneficiaries of a livestock livelihood program are more resilient. Program beneficiaries are 6 percentage points less likely to take out new loans.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	1941-1955
Number of pages	15
Journal	Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy
Volume	45
Issue number	4
Early online date	May 18 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1002/aepp.13383
State	Published - Dec 2023

Keywords

COVID-19
asset smoothing
consumption smoothing
coping
credit
savings
shocks

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Development
Economics and Econometrics

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10.1002/aepp.13383License: CC BY-NC-ND

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abstract = "We examine shocks experienced by rural Nepali households during the COVID-19 pandemic. Households primarily experienced income and price shocks during a government-imposed lockdown. During this time, households managed to effectively protect consumption, and mostly relied on credit (26\%), asset sales (10\%) and savings (8\%). Debt levels nearly doubled, with limited changes to savings. We then leverage a long-term randomized control trial (RCT) to assess whether beneficiaries of a livestock livelihood program are more resilient. Program beneficiaries are 6 percentage points less likely to take out new loans.",

keywords = "COVID-19, asset smoothing, consumption smoothing, coping, credit, savings, shocks",

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note = "We thank the American people through the United States Agency for International Development under Agreement No. AID‐OAAL‐12‐00001 with the BASIS Markets, Risk and Resilience Feed the Future Innovation Lab, and the United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture Hatch project \#1025936. Heifer International funded all programmatic aspects of the study. We thank Interdisciplinary Analysts, specifically Hiranya Baral, Dnes Dangol, Chandra K.C., Himal Khanal, Pankaj Pokhrel, Moovie Sharma and Sudhindra Sharma for their role in data collection. We also thank Neena Joshi, Kishor Kafle, Hilary Haddigan, Mahendra Lohani, Shubh Mahato, Dipesh Pokharel and Ben Wood at Heifer International and Heifer Nepal for their roles in the formulation and execution of this research. Participants at the AEPP Special Issue writer's workshop in Kathmandu, Nepal, and Michael Carter, Hope Michelson, Sudha Narayanan, Kalyani Raghunathan, Shahidur Rashid, Samyam Shreshtha, William Thompson, Alex Winter‐Nelson and two anonymous referees provided helpful comments. All errors are our own. 1",

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Coping with COVID-19 shocks in rural Nepal

Abstract

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