Estimating the short-term effects and seasonal dynamics of Malawi’s 2015/16 drought on household food insecurity and child malnutrition

In 2015, Southern Africa experienced a drought that affected approximately 30 million people across seven countries. Using a nationally representative household panel survey dataset and a remotely sensed measure of drought intensity during the 2015/16 farming season, we rigorously estimate the short-term effects of the drought on food consumption and child malnutrition in Malawi. We capitalize on the coincidence of the drought with the roll-out of the 2016 survey wave to examine how its impacts on household dietary patterns, food insecurity coping mechanisms, and child nutritional outcomes evolved over the year as households depleted their food stocks. Our fixed effects models reveal significant adverse impacts on dietary quality and acute child malnutrition, particularly soon after the failed harvest. Affected households initially responded by lowering the quality of their diets, before adopting more severe coping mechanisms as the year progressed. Children exposed to the drought lost weight immediately following harvest. However, the dietary quality and nutritional outcomes of drought- and non-drought-exposed households converged later in the year. Despite initial weight loss, drought-exposed children had lower probabilities of wasting during the rainy season, likely because households restricted adult food consumption and prioritized children during this period of the year.