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.
The current COVID-19 pandemic requires rapid, evidence-based action to contain the spread of the virus and mitigate its direct and indirect negative consequences. Data for wider decision-making in poor and remote areas is largely missing, putting evidence constraints to potential development aid responses.
Part 1: Aims at generating evidence on how young firms and young workers are coping with the current situation. We target 720 alumni of accredited Vocational Training Institutes (VTIs) in Uganda who graduated 2 to 4 years ago, whom, as of January 2020 were: young entrepreneurs (22%), formal workers (44%) and informal workers (24%) in core manufacturing and service sectors in Uganda (plumbing, welding, carpentry, tailoring, etc.).
Wearing masks and regularly washing hands with soap and clean water are strategies recommended by the CDC and the WHO to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. These actions may be feasible in settings where social distancing measures are difficult to implement. However, it is challenging for health authorities in low-income countries (LICs) to share accurate, up-to-date information with local communities, and misinformation and mistrust can undermine compliance.
To estimate whether differences in response to the pandemic are driven by trust in security services, researchers will examine the downstream effects of a community policing initiative through two waves of a mobile-phone survey. They will leverage a recent community policing RCT that created opportunities for positive interactions with police officers through community-police forums held regularly in some areas but not others.
COVID-19 is likely to differentially impact educational access in low-income countries. First, this study provides high-frequency descriptive data on schooling attitudes, home environment, and at-home learning for a representative sample of Busia County 8th Graders. Second, it examines the extent to which a previously schooling intervention, aimed at helping eighth-graders transition to secondary school (Bonds 2020), can mitigate the educational impacts of the crisis.
As COVID-19 spreads in lower-income countries, electricity access will be critical for households and firms to continue productive activities, maintain economic connections, and stay up-to-date on the latest public health guidelines. Meanwhile, public health restrictions may cause severe economic impacts, particularly in the poorest areas.
This project uses a crowdsourcing platform to analyze the impact of the COVID-19 virus and its accompanying economic effects on pastoralist populations. We rely on a network of pastoralists in the arid counties of Kenya who have firsthand knowledge of economic and health conditions in the regions we are studying. These contributors complete surveys on a daily or weekly basis. Survey topics include livestock and commodity prices, household health, and government support.
Tracking how people’s lives are affected by the COVID-19 pandemic can enable policymakers to better understand the situation in their countries and make data-driven policy decisions. To respond to this need, IPA has developed the RECOVR survey—a panel survey that will facilitate comparisons, document real-time trends of policy concern, and inform decision-makers about the communities that are hardest-hit by the economic toll of the pandemic.
Tracking how people’s lives are affected by the COVID-19 pandemic can enable policymakers to better understand the situation in their countries and make data-driven policy decisions. To respond to this need, IPA has developed the RECOVR survey—a panel survey that will facilitate comparisons, document real-time trends of policy concern, and inform decision-makers about the communities that are hardest-hit by the economic toll of the pandemic.
Tracking how people’s lives are affected by the COVID-19 pandemic can enable policymakers to better understand the situation in their countries and make data-driven policy decisions. To respond to this need, IPA has developed the RECOVR survey—a panel survey that will facilitate comparisons, document real-time trends of policy concern, and inform decision-makers about the communities that are hardest-hit by the economic toll of the pandemic.
Due to social distancing measures and school closures—and given the challenge to reach rural students—the Ministry of Education of Peru developed Aprendo en Casa (AeC), a multi-platform remote education strategy. Results of a survey aimed at monitoring its take-up suggest that less than half of homes that access AeC through radio are satisfied with it, and nearly half of parents report they require more support in order to help their children.
Researchers investigate the individual-level determinants of disease knowledge and behavior in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in Aceh, Indonesia. The project uses data from a representative population sample of 40-70-year old’s, obtained from telephone interviews between March and May 2020 and combines these with data from face-to-face interviews in 2019.
- Both knowledge and uptake of protective health behavior are relatively high.
- Knowledge is the largest explanatory driver of protective health behavior, while socioeconomics and economic preferences are minor determinants.
- However, knowledge itself is strongly shaped by socioeconomic gradients, being lower in less educated, less wealthy, and rural households.
- Similarly, information sources predict knowledge and differ significantly by socioeconomic groups.
- The rural-urban gap prevails across outcomes.
To estimate whether differences in response to the pandemic are driven by trust in security services, researchers will examine the downstream effects of a community policing initiative through two waves of a mobile-phone survey. They will leverage a recent community policing RCT that created opportunities for positive interactions with police officers through community-police forums held regularly in some areas but not others.
COVID-19 is likely to differentially impact educational access in low-income countries. First, this study provides high-frequency descriptive data on schooling attitudes, home environment, and at-home learning for a representative sample of Busia County 8th Graders. Second, it examines the extent to which a previously schooling intervention, aimed at helping 8th Graders transition to secondary school (Bonds 2020), can mitigate the educational impacts of the crisis.
Tracking how people’s lives are affected by the COVID-19 pandemic can enable policymakers to better understand the situation in their countries and make data-driven policy decisions. To respond to this need, IPA has developed the RECOVR survey—a panel survey that will facilitate comparisons, document real-time trends of policy concern, and inform decision-makers about the communities that are hardest-hit by the economic toll of the pandemic.
