Households’ poverty and inequality after the COVID-19: Insights from panel data of face-to-face surveys in Southeast Asia

Manh Hung Do, Trung Thanh Nguyen and Ulrike Grote

PLOS ONE, 2026, vol. 21, issue 1, 1-16

Abstract: The global COVID-19 pandemic has had catastrophic impacts on global economies and human health. The consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic include the fatalities of millions of people and increased poverty. Given the limited evidence at the micro level and on the heterogeneous impacts of the COVID-19, we use panel data of 2,517 households from Thailand and Vietnam to investigate the correlation and heterogeneous effects of the COVID-19 on household income and poverty and to examine the distributional effects on household income. The results show that the COVID-19 has a negative correlation with household income, while it has a positive correlation with the Gini coefficient of income inequality and poverty. Our results also show that there are unequal effects of the COVID-19 on household income, inequality, and poverty at the micro level. Further, the COVID-19 has the highest negative impact on daily per capita income of households in the 10th and 25th quantile groups. Policy implications are proposed to support households in disadvantageous groups.

Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0341648

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0341648

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