COVID-19 Affects Everyone but Not Equally : The Gendered Poverty Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Colombia
COVID-19 (Coronavirus) does not distinguish borders, race or gender. Everyone is affected but not equally. Women are at risk of seeing structural socioeconomic gaps deepen with COVID-9(Coronavirus), along with worsening violence and social norms. T...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2020
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/357101596540950552/COVID-19-Affects-Everyone-but-Not-Equally-The-Gendered-Poverty-Effects-of-the-COVID-19-Pandemic-in-Colombia http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34315 |
| Summary: | COVID-19 (Coronavirus) does not
distinguish borders, race or gender. Everyone is affected
but not equally. Women are at risk of seeing structural
socioeconomic gaps deepen with COVID-9(Coronavirus), along
with worsening violence and social norms. The authors
explore the extent to which COVID-19 (Coronavirus) will
exacerbate gendered employment, income generation and,
ultimately, poverty gaps. The authors explore a new but
sprawling literature discussing the employment effects of
COVID-19 (Coronavirus). The authors also develop a simple
microsimulation methodology to estimate the poverty impacts
of COVID-19 (Coronavirus) (versus a counterfactual of no
COVID-19 (Coronavirus)); the specific poverty reduction
impacts of mitigation policies; and the distinctive impacts
by gender. The authors test our microsimulation approach in
Colombia, a country that has implemented an unparalleled
number of mitigation measures and has reopened its economy
earlier than regional neighbors. The authors find that the
poverty impacts of COVID-19 (Coronavirus) are daunting
(between 3.0 and 9.1 pp increases of poverty headcount).
Mitigation measures vary considerably in their individual
capacity to reverse poverty (from no effect to 0.9 pp
poverty reduction). A fiscally neutral universal basic
income (UBI) will bring about larger poverty reductions.
Importantly, both men and women report similar poverty
impacts from the pandemic and mitigation policies. The sheer
magnitude of the downturn, the design of interventions and
our own measure of poverty explain this results. |
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