The COVID-19 pandemic hit the Peruvian Amazon in mid-March and sparked international concern about the well-being of the indigenous and non-indigenous peoples of the region. Although the two major urban centers—Iquitos and Pucallpa—received media attention, information about conditions in the many smaller rural communities along the rivers of Loreto and Ucayali regions is scarce.
The Philippines Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) is implementing the Social Amelioration Program (SAP), which is an emergency subsidy and cash transfer program to support vulnerable households during COVID-19. To fast track the distribution of financial assistance to the affected families, DWSD in partnership with six financial service providers and Land Bank provided the option to receive payments via digital payments.
The research team is collecting data on the impacts of COVID-19 as experienced by customers of social enterprises around the world.
This project tracks on a monthly basis the impacts of COVID-19 on diverse households across five urban townships and across Magway Region in Myanmar. The core survey instrument will focus on six key areas: employment, food security, migration, access to support and services, lifestyle and behavioral changes (including WASH) and household finances.
This project seeks to generate spatially disaggregated data to track local market outcomes, in particular retail prices, in Kenya and Uganda during the ongoing pandemic, and study the importance of different channels that drive the observed market outcomes. The researchers rely on a quick-response online survey to track product prices and availability of selected essential consumer products across Kenya and Uganda since March 2020.
Production shutdowns due to COVID-19 are severing valuable ties between employers and workers in manufacturing sectors in developing countries. Protecting these work relationships, especially accumulated learning and job/firm-specific skills, may mitigate COVID-19’s longer-term economic impacts. The researchers propose to generate evidence on using wage vouchers to incentivize retention in Myanmar’s garments sector, in particular in laid-off workers’ previous factories.
Following the outbreak of COVID-19 infections in Bangladesh, the government implemented a national lockdown during the period March 26 to May 30, 2020. The government also ordered school closures for an indefinite time period, which threatens to create a long-term learning gap crisis. Those compelled to stay at home during this lockdown faced adverse economic consequences including income loss and significant reduction in consumption.
The research team is conducting phone interviews on previously collected representative samples of individuals in Edo and Delta states in Nigeria.
Little is known about the effects of large cash transfers in contexts of protracted displacement. This includes the influence of cash transfers on health behaviors during shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic. IDinsight plans to develop evidence in this area by building on an on-going impact evaluation of GiveDirectly’s unconditional cash transfer program in Kiryandongo refugee settlement, Uganda.
- Respondents were well-informed about key COVID-19 symptoms and protective behaviours.
- Most respondents had access to water, soap, and masks to prevent contraction of COVID-19.
- Most households reported experiencing increased food prices, job loss, business closure, or increases in prices of business or farm inputs between March and July 2020. Respondents also reported difficulties in accessing food. During this same time, food prices were elevated and monthly food and cash rations had been decreased.
- Most respondents who needed to access health facilities were able to access them. However, some of the respondents noted challenges such lack of supplies in health facilities and lack of money to afford services or drugs.
- Most households reported being food insecure in July 2020. However, respondents who received USD 1000 unconditional cash transfer prior to the lockdown had marginally stronger food security than households who were randomly chosen to receive their transfers later and have not yet received them.
- Respondents who received USD 1000 unconditional cash transfer prior to the lockdown had higher psychological wellbeing compared to yet-to-receive households. However, most respondents expressed feelings of sadness and fear. These feelings were associated with a lack of resources to provide for their households and fear of contracting COVID-19.
This project examines the economic determinants for social distancing in the context of COVID-19. Previous economics studies document the important role behavioral biases could play in inter-temporal decision-making. Viewing health in an inter-temporal framework, individuals make health investment decisions in the present to maximize their lifetime utility.
Indigenous communities are often socially and economically marginalized which makes them particularly vulnerable to the impact of COVID-19. The Population Council has a longstanding partnership with indigenous communities in Mexico through the "Abriendo Futuros" program.
While only time can tell what the long-term effects of COVID-19 will be on agricultural supply chains and global food systems, the moment to shape our response is now. Through a project that has been generously funded by DFID’s Research and Evidence Division, 60 Decibels will survey 500 Kenyan farmers every month between June and December 2020 to understand their experience of living through the pandemic and the support they will find useful.
- Almost all households have had to adopt at least one coping mechanism to deal with the pandemic. Over half have had to take a significant step like selling an asset (13 percent) or borrowing money (39 percent).
- 25 percent of farmers have at least one less source of income compared to the same time last year. This is driven largely by a reduction in non-agricultural sources of income. Farmers are also relying more on farming for food. This is likely due to market closures. Plus, 72 percent said prices for food items have increased.
- 51 percent of farmers have adjusted all five farming activities—working on the farm, hiring labor, purchasing inputs, and harvesting and selling produce—in the last two weeks to cope with the pandemic. The largest reductions are in hired labor; farmers are compensating by spending additional hours on the farm.
- 83 percent report an increase in the prices of agricultural inputs or food, but 72 percent got lower prices for their produce. A further 77 percent report reduction in volumes sold, indicating limited potential of returns from farming.
- When asked about the kind of support they need, cash or food donations were mentioned by over two-thirds of farmers.
Frontline health workers are integral to the public health response to COVID-19. In Malang District, Indonesia, the role of community health workers (kaders) has been to reinforce public health messaging, facilitate social distancing measures, and act as village-level educators. However, it is unclear how effectively kaders have been able to fulfill this role.
With on-going mixed-methods longitudinal data collection of adolescents and their caregivers in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Jordan, the Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE) longitudinal research programme will undertake virtual survey research to understand young people’s knowledge, beliefs, and behavioural responses in the context of the evolving COVID-19 pandemic in three diverse settings.
The "Life with Corona" project aims to capture the voices and moods of affected citizens around the world, collecting data to provide answers to these questions. Life with Corona is a charitable open access citizen science project based on rigorous academic methods. The data will be made available for academic non-profit analyses.
On March 11, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus (or COVID-19) as a global pandemic. Since then, many governments have introduced guidelines and orders in the hopes of stopping the spread of coronavirus within their country. With people staying indoors and severely limiting their activities, their interpersonal and societal interactions are undergoing significant transformation.
This project is comprised of two parts. First, researchers are conducting an evidence review on how women’s groups have functioned under prior economic and health shocks. The evidence synthesis will include both quantitative and qualitative research.
Escaping Poverty (EP) explores the link between mental health and efforts to improve economic productivity for those in extreme poverty through a multi-arm field experiment with a sample of 7,330 households. It identifies barriers to exiting poverty through random assignment of anti-poverty asset transfer and training program intervention components, as well as cognitive-behavioral therapy. In particular, EP examines the link between psychological distress and poverty from two perspectives.
COVID-19 and the related regulations and restrictions such as market and border closures, shelter-in-place, and product bans, are likely to significantly affect trade and food security in developing countries. This project explores how the pandemic affects Kenyan small-scale cross border traders’ businesses, food prices as well as trade informality, and corruption. It also looks at how resilience varies across traders' characteristics such as gender, trader size, and industry.
