The main purpose of the study is to identify household characteristics which can 1) distinguish between the chronic poor and transient poor and 2) be feasibly implemented as targeting criterion in poverty interventions. Data for this study was drawn from Mozambique's 2008/09 Household Budget Survey and consisted of 10,832 observations. This study fills a gap in the literature by structurally determining the impact of common shocks (drought, floods and cyclones, agricultural pests, illness, death, and theft) on 1) food expenditures at the household level and 2) poverty rates at the national level. The results of the study indicate that shocks are one of the key determinants of household food expenditures. The expected impact of shocks in aggregate increases the national poverty rate by 9%. However, the impact of specific shocks on household food expenditures varies across regions and households. Further, the variables which are strongly correlated with chronic poverty differ from the variables strongly correlated with transient poverty. These results suggest the need to both more rapidly identify and enroll households exposed to shocks in short-term social protection programs and continue to improve methods targeting the chronic poor in long-term programs. / Master of Science

As in any other sector, the Covid-19 outbreak has caused many changes in education, and there is a reasonable expectation for this intervention to have a significant impact on the students and their performance. The purpose of this study was to analyse the effects of the digital semester, imposed on students due to Covid-19 outbreak, on student academic success. Using a quasi-experimental methodological approach called dif-in-dif analysis, three empirical models were constructed to analyse if there is an overall effect when comparing our control and treatment groups, as well as if there were any group-specific differences when it comes to the performance across genders and educational levels. The study found a significant negative effect of the digital semester on student academic success, suggesting that students performed significantly worse after the Covid-19 outbreak caused the University to step away from face-to-face teaching and adapt to remote studies. Furthermore, it was found that gender-specific differences do not affect the academic performance of our treatment group; however, female students performed worse when the digital semester was implemented compared to the control group who had both the classes and exams face-to-face. Lastly, Master students were found to perform significantly worse compared to Bachelor students’ when the Covid-19 outbreak caused the education to transfer to the digital environment.