The Unequal Impact of the Coronavirus Pandemic: Evidence from Seventeen Developing Countries

Nicolas Bottan, Bridget Hoffmann and Diego A. Vera-Cossio
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Diego A. Vera Cossio

No 10582, IDB Publications (Working Papers) from Inter-American Development Bank

Abstract: The current coronavirus pandemic is an unprecedented public health challenge that has devastating economic impacts for households. Using a sample of 230,540 respondents to online surveys in 17 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, we show that the economic impacts are large and unequal: 45% of respondents report that a household member lost a job, and among households owning small businesses, 59% of respondents report that a household member closed their business. Among households with the lowest income prior to the pandemic, 71% report that a household member lost their job and 61% report that a household member closed their business. Declines in food security and healthiness are among the disproportionate impacts. Our results provide evidence that the current public health crisis will exacerbate economic inequality, and they are among the rst estimates of the labor market and wellbeing impacts of the pandemic in developing countries.

Keywords: Labor markets; Inequality; Public Health; Coronavirus Pandemic (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D14 I14 I18 I32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-08
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (50)

Downloads: (external link)
https://publications.iadb.org/publications/english ... loping-Countries.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
Journal Article: The unequal impact of the coronavirus pandemic: Evidence from seventeen developing countries (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:idb:brikps:10582

DOI: 10.18235/0002451

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IDB Publications (Working Papers) from Inter-American Development Bank Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Felipe Herrera Library ().