Impact of Water Supply Disruption on Food Insecurity Experience: Evidence from Kyrgyz Farming Households

Farming households have to depend on uninterrupted water supply for their agriculture-based livelihood. Water supply disruption may endanger food security of farming households. However, there is not much evidence on the impact of water supply disruptions on food insecurity experience on farming households in Kyrgyzstan. Households with water supply disruptions can be systematically different from those without disruptions. The difference between treated and control units induce selection bias. To address potential selection biases arising from both observable and unobservable confounders, including geographic confounding where households in arid or infrastructure-poor areas face both higher water disruption and food insecurity, as well as other sources such as collider bias, this study applies fixed-effects models and reports random-effects estimates. The results suggest consistently that water supply disruptions can increase food insecurity of farming households. While this study focuses on the effect of water disruption on food insecurity rather than on evaluating specific interventions, the findings highlight the need for policies that promote uninterrupted water supply, for example through resilient infrastructure, maintenance, and contingency planning, whose effectiveness should be examined in future research.