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Distributional Impacts of COVID-19 in MENA
households have a similar probability of accessing the health services when they need them. Poor households are also more likely to face food insecurity than the nonpoor households. Around 13 percent of the poor households had children skipping a meal in the last 30 days prior to the survey, compared with 9 percent of the nonpoor ones. The same pattern is observed for households whose children went to bed hungry or had fewer than three meals per day.
Conclusion Almost one year after the first case of COVID-19 was recorded in Djibouti, the rate of infection has slowed. Despite a return to normal life, the impacts of the pandemic continue to affect the well-being of households. The three waves of the COVID-19 phone surveys aimed to follow the recovery of the economic outcomes of the national and refugee populations in Djibouti, as well as some critical welfare results, such as access to basic goods and services or food insecurity. Economic recovery in Djibouti continues to follow a positive trend both in terms of workload and income. In the third wave of the survey, around 83 percent of the national breadwinners worked the week before the survey versus 77 percent in wave 2 and 58 percent in wave 1. The intensity of the economic activity is also higher than in the previous waves. Moreover, fewer households reported a decrease in their sources of income compared with the previous waves. However, for the breadwinners who still suffer from the fallout of the pandemic, the situation may have worsened. The reduction of workload is more associated with no pay than during the previous waves. Moreover, fewer breadwinners received partial payment compared with the previous waves. These results suggest a situation where the fallout of the pandemic may be felt more severely by vulnerable workers. The situation of village-based refugee households in Djibouti shows signs of being precarious. Their economic activity is much lower than among the nationals and urban refugees, with only 49 percent of breadwinners working the week before the survey (versus 83 percent for the nationals and 68 percent of urban refugees). These breadwinners were also more likely to report a lower workload than others. And they appear to be engaged in more vulnerable activities, given that most of the refugees work in the informal sector (87 percent), while only half of the national breadwinners do. Thus, it appears that the economic recovery seems to take more time for the village-based
