ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the impact of climatic shocks on agricultural income, household food and education expenditure in Uganda. Furthermore, it also highlights the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on household welfare. The analysis is based on Uganda’s Living Standards Measurement Study – Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) data and the Uganda High-Frequency Phone Survey (HFPS) on COVID-19 by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) estimation with fixed-effects and random-effects modelling was used, and robustness checks were employed using the Heckman two-step procedure to analyse the impact of shocks on household education expenditure. The findings show that rainfall shocks have significant adverse impacts on agricultural income, food consumption and education expenditure. Non-farm employment was found to be a significant safety net against the adverse effects of such shocks. Evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic data shows that agricultural income was adversely affected which, in turn, affected household food consumption and educational expenditure. The findings of this chapter provide critical insights into some of the key threats to household welfare and the possible mitigating remedies to such shocks.
