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Presentation 24573

To respond to the negative economic shock from its response to the pandemic, the Thai government implemented various policy measures including soft loans, cash handouts, and tax refunds. At the scale of the population, the net impact of these policies in countering the effects of the COVID shock is not well understood.

This research aimed to monitor and analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated containment measures on rural and urban livelihoods in Kenya, to help guide resource allocation and inform policy actions for future crises. Data were collected through two rounds of (cross-sectional) cellphone surveys of a nationally representative sample of 800 households stratified equally between rural and urban areas.

Commonly used data collection practices use annual recall to capture individuals��� labor activities over a year. However, long recall periods are likely to suffer from distortions and loss, particularly when work patterns are seasonal and informal. In a panel of rural households in Malawi, we use a survey experiment to test the effect of using long recall periods on the reported number of labor activities, labor supply, and types of work relative to those resulting from a set of shorter, quarterly interviews. We document large losses from the longer recall window, particularly on the extensive margin of labor supply with reductions of over 20%. These losses are greatest for periods furthest from the last survey round and are especially large among individuals whose labor supply is being reported for them, reaching as high as 50% losses for some outcomes. The composition of households��� primary respondents, predominantly male and older, as well as differential effects by age both suggest that use of long recall may lead to meaningful biases by both age and gender in resulting data.

When WHO declared COVID-19 a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) on 30th January 2020 and a pandemic on 11th March 2020, Kenya and many other governments responded with a range of measures aimed at slowing the spread of local infection. Responses included containment and mitigation measures such as restrictions on population mobility (lockdown and curfew), social gatherings and economic activities, and health specific measures to manage infections and mitigate spread. The measures were expected to reduce local spread of the virus but also to negatively affect normal social and economic activities, and thus the livelihoods of population (e.g. Zeufack et al. 2020). Governments were thus confronted with the need to protect both lives and livelihoods. Many therefore instituted social protection interventions to cushion their populations from anticipated negative impacts of the pandemic and the associated policy responses on economic welfare. Yet in most cases, limited fiscal capacity meant that these responses were unable to cushion the economic blow for most people. The objective of this research was to analyze the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated containment and mitigation responses on rural and urban livelihoods in Kenya. Documenting the effects of the pandemic on livelihoods can help guide resource allocation and inform policy actions for future crises. Data was collected from a nationally representative sample of 800 households stratified equally between rural and urban areas. We used cell phone survey to collect data between 18th September and 26th October 2020. Data included changes in income, coping strategies used, food quantity and quality, and assistance received from the government between July and October 2020. Data collection was part of a multi-country study across African countries: Kenya, Senegal, Mali, Nigeria, and Zambia (Maredia et. al., 2021). Results show significant decline in reported incomes of households in both rural and urban areas as households lost sources of income. The share of households reporting per capita per day income below PPP$1.90 increased significantly from 61% in March 2020 (which we consider the prepandemic period) to 73% in July 2020 (four months into the pandemic). A majority of rural and urban households also consumed less food and reduced the quality of their diets. These findings confirm that containment measures for Covid-19 pandemic have had significant negative economic impacts on households in both rural and urban areas. The broad findings are generally consistent with other studies in Kenya, which have found that households lost income sources and experienced food shortages. Yet none of these other studies are at a representative scale and compare the Covid19 impacts by rural and urban populations, as this study does. It is likely that the pandemic will be a lingering grave concern in Kenya for some time based on the fact that the country has been through three waves of the pandemic, there is continuing emergence of new variants, and the pace of vaccination is slow. There is need for expanded social safety net programs to support affected households in both rural and urban areas. It is critical to prioritize 2 mass vaccination of the population to facilitate faster return to normal participation in economic activities.