Policy Briefs

Gender disparities in social and economic outcomes, already larger in the developing world than in the rich countries, have been exacerbated by the pandemic. Policy action is vital to address the compounding of existing inequalities and to protect the most vulnerable women.

The Cox’s Bazar Panel Survey (CBPS) tracks representative samples of Rohingya refugees and host communities in Cox’s Bazar district in southern Bangladesh. A phone-based follow-up survey from April 2020 reveals that, despite widespread knowledge of COVID-19, attendance at religious gatherings is high, representing a potentially important pathway for disease spread in refugee camps and host communities in Cox’s Bazar.

Migration plays an outsized role in the global transmission of COVID-19. Effective mitigation policies therefore include limitations on mobility. However, labor migration is a fundamental component of income for large numbers of households, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Using detailed microdata, we document how migration-dependent households have been hit with the dual shocks of higher infection prevalence and greater economic disruption as a result of COVID-19.

This brief reports changes in economic activity, incomes, food security and mental health by tracking 2636 rural households in Nepal between September 2019 and May 2020 using six rounds of surveys during both lean and harvest seasons, before and after the COVID-19 lockdown. Labor supply in the village, labor migration, remittance earnings, and total incomes have fallen dramatically compared to harvest periods, and even relative to the pre-harvest lean season. The COVID-19 pandemic luckily hit rural Nepal several months prior to the period of peak seasonal hunger, but this implies that economic outcomes are likely to continue to worsen over the next few months until the next rice harvest in October.

We study the prevalence of COVID-19 symptoms in refugee and host communities and their correlates with current and pre-COVID-19 living conditions. We administered a phone-based survey to a sample of 909 households in Cox’s Bazar which was drawn from a household panel representative of Rohingya refugees and the host population. We find that COVID-19 symptoms are highly prevalent in Cox’s Bazar, especially in refugee camps. Attendance at religious and social events threatens efforts to contain the spread of the disease. Pharmacies and religious leaders are promising outlets to disseminate life-saving information.

Inadequate COVID-19 testing capabilities is producing testing data that cannot be reliably compared across countries or across jurisdictions within low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This is hampering the ability of LMICs to devise timely and effective policy responses, such as identifying hotspots and spatially targeting public health responses or economic relief. We develop a methodology to make indirect inferences about the spatial distribution of COVID-19 risk using the insight that migration is a primary driver of disease spread across jurisdictional borders.

Policies imposed in rich countries to fight the coronavirus could have adverse effects in low-income nations, potentially endangering more lives than they save. We combine country specific estimates of economic benefits of disease suppression with an epidemiological model to demonstrate that while the benefits of social distancing translate to a 59% savings in US GDP, it only translates to savings of 14% of Bangladesh’s GDP or 19% of India’s GDP. Not only are the epidemiological and economic benefits of social distancing much smaller in poorer countries, such policies may also exact a heavy toll on the poorest and most vulnerable. More work is needed to determine if the low mortality estimates of developing countries hold if the prevalence of comorbidities and exposure to pollution are taken into account.