Join the network
Blog
Age composition of population and Covid-19The novel Covid-19 is affecting the advanced countries in the Western Hemisphere disproportionately more than developing countries. In this post, Basu...
227 UNU-WIDER articles, publications, projects, experts...
Filter by...
Reset all
Background Note
COVID-19 and socioeconomic impact in AsiaSeveral countries have enacted lockdown measures in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic to protect their health systems and reduce the number of mortalities. One of the most extreme national lockdown measures has been taken by the government of India...
Blog
How do we live with corona?People who live through extreme events are, often deeply, altered by the experiences they have. Even when those experiences take place predominantly...
Background Note
COVID-19 and socioeconomic impact in AfricaWhat has the government of South Africa done with respect to COVID-19 measures of mitigation and suppression? The first COVID-19 positive case was confirmed on 5 March 2020. Just ten days later, South Africa had 61 positive cases and President...
Blog
How Africa can fight the pandemic
The response to Africa’s COVID-19 plight must be swift and at scale rather than too little, too late. In a world short of progressive global...
Blog
Migrant workers in the Covid-19 pandemicMillions of migrant workers around the world provide valuable income for their families and contribute more broadly to the economies of both their...
Blog
The five criteria low income countries must have in place for lockdowns to workAs the COVID-19 virus has spread across the globe, developing countries are starting to enact many of the same policies used in China, Europe, and...
Background Note
COVID-19 and socioeconomic impact in AfricaThe COVID-19 pandemic has now spread to over 180 countries, including several countries in sub-Saharan Africa.1 Kenya reported its first COVID-19 case on 13 March 2020. By 31 March the number of confirmed cases had risen to 59, with over 70 per cent...
Blog
An unprecedented threat requires unprecedented leadership: What is needed from global powers
COVID-19 is the greatest global threat the world has faced since the Second World War. It is not the deadliest or most infectious disease recorded...
Working Paper
COVID-19: mortality, future years lost, and demographic structureCOVID-19 causes extremely high mortality among the old. This motivates a comparison of the losses of future lifetime years and future lifetime years of work ensuing from a hypothetical 25,000 excess deaths in Italy, whose affluent population is one of...
Blog
Artificial intelligence vs. COVID-19 in developing countries: Priorities and trade-offs
The rush to harness Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the fight against the pandemic may be an opportunity for developing countries to accelerate the...
Background Note
Artificial intelligence versus COVID-19 in developing countriesIn this note, I will refer to current efforts to harness artificial intelligence (AI) in the push back against COVID-19, note its promises, limitations, potential pitfalls, and identify priorities for developing countries. Artificial Intelligence is...
Technical Note
Deriving shocks to household consumption expenditures from the associated income shocks resulting from COVID-19This note, which forms part of a series of technical notes that complement Lastunen et al. (2021), reports the approach used to derive shocks to household expenditures from shocks at the individual-level labour incomes. Its structure is composed by...
Technical Note
Iterative proportional fitting for reweighting input data in SOUTHMOD microsimulation modelsThis note describes how the counterfactual datasets in the working paper by Lastunen et al. (2021) have been reweighted, for each country analysed, to the ‘pre-crisis’ time point of 31 March 2020. The procedure consists of five main steps. The note...
Blog
Wasted talent – How COVID-19’s effect on the poor could make all of society poorer
The opening keynote of the recent WIDER Development Conference, COVID-19 and development – effects and new realities for the Global South, was given...
Blog
Staffan Lindberg’s keynote address is a wake-up call
In introducing Staffan Lindberg’s keynote at the WIDER Development Conference, UNU-WIDER Senior Research Fellow and political scientist Rachel...
Technical Note
Full-year adjustment for modelling COVID-19 policies in SOUTHMOD tax-benefit microsimulation modelsThis technical note presents a modelling approach used in Lastunen et al. (2021) where tax and benefit policies are scaled to reflect their actual duration during a single calendar year. It can be applied to tax-benefit microsimulation models...
Technical Note
Imputation methods for adjusting SOUTHMOD input data to income losses due to the COVID-19 crisisThis note sets out two different methods on how to adjust incomes in the microdata underlying the standard SOUTHMOD models to reflect a sudden shock, in this case the COVID-19 shock, as done in the accompanying working paper by Lastunen et al. (2021)...
Blog
Working together to better understand how COVID-19 affects poverty and inequalityIn summer 2020 the SOUTHMOD team set out, with partners, to analyse the impact of government policies on protecting households from getting poorer and...
Blog
COVID-19 and the Global South — From crisis response to sustainable development
Around the world, the pandemic, and the measures taken to address it, have had far reaching effects on poverty, inequality, and governance. And even...
Policy Brief
Working Paper
An assessment of the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on Kenya’s tradeWe examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Kenya’s foreign trade using quarterly trade data for the period 2019 to the second quarter of 2021. The exploratory analysis shows that growth of Kenya’s merchandise exports remained resilient...
Working Paper
COVID-19 in Central America: effects of firm resilience and policy responses on employmentWith data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey, this paper examines how firm-level resilience capabilities interact with government support in the reduction of lay-offs among formal firms in Central America. We estimate two latent variables to...
Journal Article
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the poorWe examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the livelihoods of the poor in a semi-rural setting in Bangladesh. We use an unusually rich dataset which tracks the economic and financial transactions of sixty poor and very poor individuals and...
Blog
Dr Pia Rattenhuber on inequality in crises — an interviewHow do crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic influence inequality and the other way around? This year’s UN Day Dresden put a spotlight on “Inequalities...
Working Paper
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the poorIn this paper, we examine the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the livelihoods of the poor. We use an unusually rich data set from a ‘financial diaries’ study known as the Hrishipara Daily Diaries Project. The data set tracks the economic...
Working Paper
The livelihood impacts of COVID-19 in urban South AfricaThis paper investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and related policy measures on livelihoods in urban South Africa. Using qualitative research methods, we analyse two rounds of semi-structured phone interviews, conducted between June and...
Blog
What does COVID-19 mean for Africa?: Challenges, but also opportunitiesThe COVID-19 pandemic has led to an exceptional social and economic crisis all over the world, with Africa among the hardest-hit regions. What are the...
Report
How COVID-19 is affecting workers and their livelihoods in urban GhanaThis survey is a collaborative project conducted by researchers of the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) and the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), University of...
Working Paper
Do pandemics lead to rebellion? Policy responses to COVID-19, inequality, and protests in the USAThis paper analyses how inequality across counties in the United States of America has shaped the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the incidence of protests.The empirical analysis combines weekly data between January and December 2020 on levels of...
Working Paper
The gendered crisis: livelihoods and mental well-being in India during COVID-19This paper studies the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the gendered dimensions of employment and mental health among urban informal-sector workers in India. First, we find that men’s employment declined by 84 percentage points post-pandemic relative...
Blog
Headline data suggests low-income states are coping better with the pandemic than high-income states. But is this true?States with fragile state health systems have been commended for effective responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. But if we take into account factors...
Working Paper
COVID-19 and trade facilitation in Southern AfricaCOVID-19 has created a trade crisis in Southern Africa, with a dramatic slowdown in cross-border trade. The crisis, which exposed weaknesses and deficiencies in the trade facilitation regimes, presents an opportunity for the African Continental Free...
Working Paper
Estimates of multidimensional poverty for India using NSSO-71 and -75We measure multidimensional poverty in India using National Sample Survey Organization data from 2014–15 to 2017–18. We use income, health, education, and standard of living to measure the multidimensional poverty index (MPI). The MPI headcount...
Working Paper
The role of automatic stabilizers and emergency tax–benefit policies during the COVID-19 pandemic in EcuadorThis paper makes use of tax–benefit microsimulation techniques to quantify the distributional effects of COVID-19 in Ecuador and the role of tax–benefit policies in mitigating the immediate impact of the economic shocks. Our results show a dramatic...
Working Paper
The role of trust and of poverty in compliance with social distancing measures in Africa during the COVID-19 pandemicSince it began, the COVID-19 pandemic has imposed a number of challenges on Africa and the rest of the world. Following the recommendations of the World Health Organization, many countries imposed social distancing measures and cancelled non...
Working Paper
Forecasting recovery from COVID-19 using financial dataWe develop a new methodology to nowcast the effects of the COVID-19 crisis and forecast its evolution in small, export-oriented countries. To this aim, we exploit variation in financial indexes at the industry level and relate them to the expected...
Working Paper
The COVID-19 pandemic and the economy in Southern AfricaThe COVID-19 pandemic has had severe economic consequences in Southern Africa, resulting in an unprecedented decline in production and employment. Similar policy responses have emerged across the region, centred on temporary and inadequate relief for...
Blog
Why countries best placed to handle the pandemic appear to have fared the worstDuring the first year of the pandemic, it was wealthier countries, with their comparatively stronger health systems, civil services, legal systems and...
Blog
Ecuador’s social protection system failed during the pandemic: It needs a rethinkHousehold incomes in Ecuador were badly hit by the pandemic, despite the government’s emergency grant to families. H Xavier Jara Tamayo (University of...
Working Paper
Analysis of the distributional effects of COVID-19 and state-led remedial measures in South AfricaThis paper explores the impact of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa on income poverty and inequality in South Africa. Using a static tax–benefit microsimulation model with input datasets that were adjusted to reflect people’s...
Blog
Ghana's lockdown hit vulnerable workers hard: What needs to happen next timeCoronavirus lockdowns brought the world to a standstill. Rules on hygiene and social distancing have reshaped daily life, schools and businesses had...
Working Paper
COVID-19 and the stateWe expect effective state institutions to matter in a country’s ability to respond to crises. Yet notably in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, what has stood out in simple global snapshots is that wealthier countries with stronger institutions...
Working Paper
The impact of COVID-19 on consumption poverty in MozambiqueThis study assesses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the state of emergency implemented by the Government of Mozambique on household consumption poverty. To predict changes in income and the associated effects on poverty and inequality, we...
Working Paper
The macroeconomic impact of COVID-19 in MozambiqueThis study aims to assess the economic costs of COVID-19 and the state of emergency implemented by the Government of Mozambique, relying on a social accounting matrix. It produces numerical results that represent the direct effect on (or ‘shocks’ to)...
Blog
COVID-19 lays bare Cape Town’s social divide, deepens underlying inequalitiesThe COVID-19 pandemic delivered a devastating economic shock to livelihoods across the world. In Cape Town, it has been toughest on those who had just...
Working Paper
Informal freelancers in the time of COVID-19Despite the severe negative economic shock associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, evidence from many contexts points to a surge in sales on online platforms, as well as shifts in the composition of demand. This paper investigates how the pandemic has...
Blog
South Asia: how to ensure progress on reducing poverty isn't reversed by coronavirusSouth Asia accounted for nearly two-fifths of the world’s poor, nearly half of the world’s malnourished children and was home to the largest number of...
Journal Article
COVID-19 and global povertyThe study paper provides a preliminary assessment of COVID-19’s impact on global poverty in the light of IMF’s growth forecasts. It shows that the pandemic will erode many of the gains recorded over the last decade in terms of poverty reduction. Our...
Blog
The world needs a people’s vaccineThe world needs a people’s vaccine for COVID-19 — one provided universally, and accessible to the entire world population. A patent-protected vaccine...
Working Paper
Do bigger health budgets cushion pandemics?How has government healthcare spending prepared countries for tackling the COVID-19 pandemic? Arguably, spending is the primary policy tool of governments in providing effective health. We argue that the effectiveness of spending in reducing COVID...
Working Paper
Horizontal inequality, COVID-19, and lockdown readinessA growing body of research shows that COVID-19 both reflects and exacerbates existing inequalities. However, there are significant gaps in this research area with respect to ‘horizontal’ or group-based inequalities in Global South countries. Lack of...
Working Paper
The labour market impact of COVID-19 lockdownsIn this paper, we provide causal evidence of the impact of stringent lockdown policies on labour market outcomes at both the extensive and intensive margins, using Ghana as a case study. We take advantage of a specific policy setting, in which strict...
Journal Article
Health-system equity, egalitarian democracy and COVID-19 outcomesThe COVID-19 pandemic has led to a spate of studies showing a close connection between inequitable access to health care, welfare services and adverse outcomes from the pandemic. Others have argued that democratic governments have generally failed...
Blog
Helping the poor to survive lockdownThe Hrishipara Daily Diaries Project has been tracking the daily spending of 60 poor households in rural Bangladesh for the last six years. Analysis...
Blog
Social protection at a crossroad
How can we ensure a resilient and inclusive recovery from COVID-19? How can we hold on to the target of eradicating poverty and hunger by 2030, with...
Journal Article
Data deprivations, data gaps and digital dividesThis study draws lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic for the relationship between data-driven decision making and global development. The lessons are that: (i) users should keep in mind the shifting value of data during a crisis, and the pitfalls its...
Working Paper
The mitigating role of tax and benefit rescue packages for poverty and inequality in Africa amid the COVID-19 pandemicThis paper analyses the distributional effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and related tax-benefit measures in 2020 in a cross-country comparative perspective for five African countries: Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. We first estimate...
Working Paper
Social protection, the COVID-19 crisis, and the informal economyThis paper considers the implications of COVID-19 relief measures for the building and extension of comprehensive and universal social protection systems. It highlights three key areas emerging from the crisis, which are likely to affect the shape of...
Working Paper
Informal employment: what is missing from national economic recovery plans?Throughout 2021, fiscal stimulus packages were introduced to jump-start the COVID-19 ‘post-pandemic’ economic recovery process. While calls for economic recovery packages that promise to ‘build back better’ have come from many directions, the under...
Working Paper
Comparing the poverty-reduction efficiency of targeted versus universal benefits amid crisesThis study evaluates which type of benefit—a universal benefit, a proxy mean-tested benefit, or a categorical benefit— better cushions the poverty effects of income shocks in a developing economy. We compare the effectiveness of the three benefit...
Working Paper
‘Ask not what your country can do for you’This paper investigates how persistent changes in trust caused by the Great Recession have affected how governments and citizens across Europe responded to the next global crisis: the COVID-19 pandemic.We show that increases in individualism and...
Journal Article
The gendered crisisThis article studies the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the gendered dimensions of employment and mental health among urban informal-sector workers in Delhi, India.First, the study finds that men’s employment declined by 84 percentage points...
Journal Article
The labour market impact of COVID-19 lockdownsIn this study, we provide causal evidence of the immediate and near-term impact of stringent COVID-19 lockdown policies on employment outcomes, using Ghana as a case study. We take advantage of a specific policy setting, in which strict stay-at-home...
Working Paper
Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on employmentThis paper provides a comparative summary of recent national statistics from five Latin American countries on employment losses and gains during the peak COVID-19 years compared with pre-pandemic levels. As part of its work on the impact of the...
Blog
Research in focus – country profiles: Indonesia and Ecuador
Our Institute’s expansive international research contributions, consisting of over 800 WIDER Working Papers in the 2019–23 work programme, delve deep...
Working Paper
The potential of universal basic income schemes to mitigate shocksThe debate over universal basic income (UBI) has gained traction in the developing world in recent years. We analyse the effects of four UBI schemes on poverty and inequality measures during normal times and times of crisis in Uganda and Zambia. We...
Working Paper
The effect of wage subsidies on job retention in a developing countryWage subsidies served as a dominant labour market policy response around the world to mitigate job losses in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, no causal evidence of their effects exists for developing countries.We use unique panel labour...
Working Paper
Addressing poverty and inequality in Viet Nam during the COVID-19 pandemicThis paper investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and related tax-benefit measures in Viet Nam. The focus is on the initial phase of the crisis in 2020. The study delves into how the pandemic affected disposable incomes, examining the...
Working Paper
Performance of tax-benefit systems amid COVID-19 crises in sub-Saharan AfricaWe examine the distributional effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated tax-benefit measures in seven sub-Saharan African countries, focusing on the onset of the crisis.We evaluate impacts on disposable incomes, considering variations across...
Blog
When COVID-19 comes to Africa
There is no telling how long it will take to bring the COVID-19 coronavirus under control, or how many people will be affected. But African...
Blog
Will COVID-19 lead to half a billion more people living in poverty in developing countries?The impacts of COVID-19 in developing countries are starting to be felt. The Economist went as far as to call it the ‘next calamity’, noting how...
Working Paper
Estimates of the impact of COVID-19 on global povertyIn this paper we make estimates of the potential short-term economic impact of COVID-19 on global monetary poverty through contractions in per capita household income or consumption. Our estimates are based on three scenarios: low, medium, and high...
Blog
To die from hunger or the virus: An all too real dilemma for the poor in India (and elsewhere)
On March 24, in a speech to the nation, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, announced a 21-day lockdown. With only four hours’ notice, 1.3 billion...
Blog
Temporary shock or lasting poverty trap?: COVID-19 in South Africa
South Africa’s COVID-19 lockdown regulations are likely to have a devastating impact on the incomes of workers and their dependents. Already...
Working Paper
COVID-19 and global povertyThis paper provides a preliminary assessment of COVID-19’s impact on global poverty in the light of the IMF’s April 2020 growth forecasts. The analysis shows that the pandemic will have dramatic consequences, eroding many of the gains recorded over...
Working Paper
COVID-19: macroeconomic dimensions in the developing worldThe COVID-19 pandemic represents an unprecedented global crisis. The task for economic policy is to help keep people alive, enterprises afloat, and households out of poverty. The pandemic has macroeconomic dimensions. First, it affects macroeconomic...
Background Note
COVID-19 and the socioeconomic impact in AfricaThe first two cases of COVID-19 were reported in Ghana on 12 March 2020 by the health ministry. As a first response, on 15 March all public gatherings were banned, all schools and universities were closed, and on 23 March all of the county's borders...
Working Paper
Africa’s lockdown dilemmaThe primary policy response to suppress the spread of COVID-19 in high-income countries has been to lock down large sections of the population. However, there is growing unease that blindly replicating these policies might inflict irreparable damage...
Working Paper
Precarity and the pandemicThis paper makes a set of estimates for the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on poverty incidence, intensity, and severity in developing countries and on the distribution of global poverty. We conclude there could be increases in poverty of...
Blog
The end of poverty postponed?: Over a billion people living in poverty and a $500 million per day loss of income for the poorest people in the world could soon be realityThe COVID-19 pandemic continues to dominate headlines as the death toll rises and economies falter. However, far too little attention is being given...
Working Paper
Trust in the time of coronaThe global spread of COVID-19 is one of the largest threats to people and governments since the Second World War. The on-going pandemic and its countermeasures have led to varying physical, psychological, and emotional experiences, shaping not just...
Background Note
Making a COVID-19 vaccine globally available once developedDevelopment and production of a COVID-19 vaccine There is a high risk that the intellectual property (IP) rights of a COVID-19 vaccine will effectively block people in many poorer countries from accessing it. To avoid this situation, I propose that a...
Working Paper
Healthcare equity and COVID-19Scholars of public health typically focus on societal equity for explaining public health outcomes. Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a spate of studies showing a tight connection between inequitable access to healthcare, welfare services, and...
Blog
Poverty and the pandemic in the Pacific
COVID-19 has had a far greater economic impact than health impact on Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the Pacific. There has been extensive commentary about...
Blog
Beyond lockdown: rebuilding the social contractContinued lockdown measures are straining the social contract between citizens and governments. As this column explains, in contexts where there are...
Background Note
COVID-19 and employmentIntroduction The COVID-19 pandemic poses important risks for people’s health and economic wellbeing. While the full socio-economic consequences remain uncertain, the pandemic’s impact on the labour market has become an issue of global concern...
Working Paper
The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918–20The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918-20—commonly known as the Spanish flu—infected over a quarter of the world’s population and killed over 50 million people. It is by far the greatest humanitarian disaster caused by infectious disease in modern...
Blog
Is COVID-19 really an exogenous shock?"We cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." – Albert Einstein Economists invariably divide shocks into...
Blog
The debate around intellectual property rights and the COVID-19 vaccine
The most effective way to fight COVID-19 is by vaccinating against infection. But once the vaccine is developed, how can it be distributed across the...
Blog
The labour market implications of COVID-19 for Bangladeshi womenWith the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in Bangladesh on 8 March 2020 and the initiation of a lockdown on 26 March 2020,1 the livelihoods of a...
Blog
Graduating in the shadow of the pandemic: The impact of COVID-19 on the transition of young Mozambicans from school to workSince appearing in 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic has plunged the world into an unprecedented health and socioeconomic crisis. In response, during the...
Blog
Decent work and COVID-19 – it’s time for a just deal for all workers
Seven months into the unprecedented crisis of COVID-19, we already see significant effects on employment and earnings worldwide. The fallout could see...
Working Paper
Migration and the labour market impacts of COVID-19Using detailed microdata, we document how migration-dependent households are especially vulnerable during the COVID-19 pandemic. We create pre- and post-COVID panel datasets for three populations in Bangladesh and Nepal, leveraging experimental and...
Journal Article
COVID-19 and employmentThe COVID-19 pandemic poses risks not only for people’s health but also economic wellbeing. While the full socio-economic consequences remain uncertain, its impact on the labour market has become a key issue of global concern. Especially low-income...
Working Paper
Data, global development, and COVID-19The COVID-19 pandemic holds at least seven lessons for the relationship between data-driven decision making, the use of artificial intelligence, and development. These are that (1) in a global crisis, the shifting value of data creates policy...
Blog
Five ways coronavirus is deepening global inequality
Before coronavirus, inequality was already increasing in many parts of the developing world. But the pandemic is going to greatly heighten existing...
Blog
Do we have the right balance?: Aggregate population health and COVID-19
The world has been shaken by unprecedented efforts in the name of public health. But, efforts to arrest COVID-19 were not initially formulated with a...
Blog
The COVID-19 crisis, informal workers, and gender — understanding the intersections
The COVID-19 crisis — the pandemic, restrictions, and recession — has not been a grand leveler. While all of us, rich and poor, faced the fear and...
Displaying 128 of 227 results