More Than Doubled

food insecure) during the lockdown period.13 This suggestion is consistent with findings by Atamanov and Palaniswamy (2018) that, prepandemic, households in the West Bank were particularly vulnerable to welfare shocks. Alternative factors could help explain the relatively larger impact of the pandemic on food insecurity in the West Bank, such as differences in the existing social protection system or the capacity of the households to mitigate the negative shock from the pandemic.

Given this greater vulnerability to food insecurity, our findings suggest that the initial response to expand the social protection network to households in the West Bank was necessary. While almost 80 percent of households in Gaza were already beneficiaries of the social protection system before the lockdown, only 14 percent of those in the West Bank were covered. Our results underscore the significance of the expansion among households in the West Bank, which more than doubled the number of beneficiary households prior to the lockdown (figure 3.9). Overall, after the social protection expansion during the lockdown, 30 percent of households in the West Bank were beneficiaries of some type of program, while in Gaza it was 80 percent.14

FIGURE 3.9

The Social Protection Network in the West Bank More Than Doubled

Distribution of households receiving social protection benefits before and during the lockdown (%)

Gaza 78 2 18 1

West Bank 14 17 64 4

SP bene ciary before the lockdown Not SP bene ciary before the lockdown, new SP bene ciary during the lockdown Not SP bene ciary before the lockdown, not SP bene ciary during the lockdown Not SP bene ciary before the lockdown, received transfers from friends or family, unknown if new bene ciary during the lockdown

Source: World Bank staff calculations based on the 2020 Rapid Assessment Phone Survey. Note: SP = social protection.