Africa's lockdown dilemma: High poverty and low trust

Eva-Maria Egger, Sam Jones, Patricia Justino, Ivan Manhique and Ricardo Santos

No wp-2020-76, WIDER Working Paper Series from World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER)

Abstract: The 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 to poor households and foment social unrest in developing countries. We investigate this concern using Afrobarometer data from 2019 for 30 sub-Saharan African countries. We create a multidimensional index of lockdown readiness based on living conditions and explore its relationship with forms of trust and the potential for social unrest.

Keywords: COVID-19; Lockdown; Poverty; Social unrest; Sub-Saharan Africa; Trust (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/Publ ... er/PDF/wp2020-76.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:unu:wpaper:wp-2020-76

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in WIDER Working Paper Series from World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Siméon Rapin ().