COVID-19 and the additional poor: the projection of poverty in South Asia under a complete lockdown scenario

Loading...

Media is loading
 

Abstract/Description

One of the economic miracles of the 20th century has been the vast reduction in global poverty since 1990s (Sumner et al., 2020). The Covid-19 has stricken the global economies very harshly. And economists wonder if it has nullified the uplift of the millions of poor since 1990s. The covid-19, with other all issues and problems, has been primarily disastrous to the economy. While the largest economies have suffered, the developing world has been in deep waters as well. It is known that approximately one fourth of the population lives in South Asia. And it is also considered as one of the regions with highest population under poverty and sometimes it owns the population with extreme poverty. This paper examines what damage has Covid-19 caused to the poor living in the South Asia. We use different approaches to the poverty indicators such as poverty headcount rate (The World Bank’s standard), poverty gap index and Gini coefficient (Qiang et al., 2018). Furthermore, this study simulates 5%, 10% and 20% hit by the covid-19 in terms of decrease in the per capita income/consumption. We use the country-wise data for the poverty indicators (PovcalNet) of the South Asian economies (Castañeda et al., 2019). PovcalNet covers better data than the poverty data by International Labor Organization (ILO) and international Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). With many limitations, this study finds that covid-19 has increased the poverty in South Asia. Some of the major support programs of the economies in the region have also been acknowledged. At the end, we propose some recommendations in light to the findings of the study.

Session Theme

Socio-economic Impact of Covid-19 - Session IIC

Session Type

Parallel Technical Session

Session Chair

Dr. Uzma Iram, Assistant Professor, AERC, University of Karachi

Session Discussant

Dr. Aqdas Afzal, Program Director & Assistant Professor Social Development & Policy Program, Habib University

Start Date

3-4-2021 2:30 PM

End Date

3-4-2021 4:00 PM

Comments

  • Muhammad Baqir, Shanghai University, Baoshan Campus, Shanghai, P. R. of China
  • Biao Gu, Shanghai University, Baoshan Campus, Shanghai, P. R. of China

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS
 
Apr 3rd, 2:30 PM Apr 3rd, 4:00 PM

COVID-19 and the additional poor: the projection of poverty in South Asia under a complete lockdown scenario

One of the economic miracles of the 20th century has been the vast reduction in global poverty since 1990s (Sumner et al., 2020). The Covid-19 has stricken the global economies very harshly. And economists wonder if it has nullified the uplift of the millions of poor since 1990s. The covid-19, with other all issues and problems, has been primarily disastrous to the economy. While the largest economies have suffered, the developing world has been in deep waters as well. It is known that approximately one fourth of the population lives in South Asia. And it is also considered as one of the regions with highest population under poverty and sometimes it owns the population with extreme poverty. This paper examines what damage has Covid-19 caused to the poor living in the South Asia. We use different approaches to the poverty indicators such as poverty headcount rate (The World Bank’s standard), poverty gap index and Gini coefficient (Qiang et al., 2018). Furthermore, this study simulates 5%, 10% and 20% hit by the covid-19 in terms of decrease in the per capita income/consumption. We use the country-wise data for the poverty indicators (PovcalNet) of the South Asian economies (Castañeda et al., 2019). PovcalNet covers better data than the poverty data by International Labor Organization (ILO) and international Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). With many limitations, this study finds that covid-19 has increased the poverty in South Asia. Some of the major support programs of the economies in the region have also been acknowledged. At the end, we propose some recommendations in light to the findings of the study.