Climate shocks, household food security and welfare in Afghanistan
利用阿富汗家庭调查数据，评估洪水等气候冲击对农业家庭粮食安全和福利的影响，发现洪水显著降低收入、农场收入和粮食消费，冲突会加剧这种影响。
• Assesses the impact of climate shocks on welfare and food security in Afghanistan. • Employs ESR and matching methods to correct for endogeneity and selection bias. • Floods significantly reduce income, farm revenue and all measures of food security. • Conflict amplifies the impact of floods on household food security. • Highlights the need to use several indicators to assess food security impacts. Exposure to natural disasters in Afghanistan, notably flooding and other shocks exacerbated by climate change, poses a growing concern given the vulnerability of households to poverty and food insecurity. This paper uses two household surveys (2011/12 and 2013/14) to assess the effects of climate shocks (especially floods) on food security and welfare of agricultural households, allowing also for conflict and price shocks. We evaluate the impacts of shocks on several indicators of food security and household welfare comparing affected to non-affected households. The analysis is based on endogenous switching regressions (ESR) and propensity score matching (PSM) allowing for selection bias and addressing endogeneity. Floods are the main shock and have significant adverse effects on food security and welfare indicators. Affected households are likely to experience food diversity reduced from acceptable to moderate, increased food coping stress and two-thirds could be pushed from little to moderate or greater hunger. The estimated average treatment effect in 2013–14 implies a decrease of about a third in food consumption expenditures, with similar reductions in household income and farm revenue. The findings highlight the need for better disaster risk reduction and planning strategies to support affected populations to respond to and recover from climate shocks.