The Impact of COVID-19 on the Dietary Diversity of Children and Adolescents: Evidence from a Rural/Urban Panel Study

ABSTRACT

This paper offers the first empirical evidence of the impact of COVID-19 on dietary diversity among children and adolescents in urban and rural families by using panel data collected in 2019 (before COVID-19) and 2020 (during COVID-19) in northern China. Our study uses panel data from 2,201 primary school students and 1,341 junior high-school students to apply the difference in differences (DID) method to estimate the impact of COVID-19 on dietary diversity among students in urban and rural families. We found that the dietary diversity score (DDS) of rural students decreased by 0.295 points (p < 0.01) compared with that of urban students during COVID-19. Specifically, COVID-19 significantly reduced the frequency of rural students' consumption of vegetables by 1.8 percent, protein-rich foods such as soybean products and nuts by 6.0 percent, meats by 4.0 percent, aquatic products by 6.7 percent, and eggs by 5.3 percent, compared with urban students. Further, COVID-19 had a significant negative effect on the dietary diversity of students from low- and middle-income groups, with the DDS of the low-income group decreasing by 0.31 points (p < 0.01) and that of the middle-income group by 0.12 points (p < 0.1).