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Distributional Impacts of COVID-19 in MENA
Conclusion In the MENA region, COVID-19 is taking a heavy toll on welfare and exacerbating long-standing structural problems such as low employment rates. And by affecting the vulnerable more, the pandemic and its impacts are increasing inequalities in a way that may take a long time to undo. In the midst of the pandemic, HFPSs were conducted in many countries to offer a snapshot of impacts on jobs, earnings, health care, and social protection. They offer an unprecedented data collection effort aimed at producing information on the socioeconomic impact of COVID-19—and on the associated economic crisis on households and individuals in the region—at a time when more traditional data collection tools could not be employed. This chapter highlighted their key findings, which include the following: • COVID-19 adversely affected MENA households and their members along the entire income distribution, with the hardest hit being those in the bottom 40 percent. •• Lockdown measures forced many people to stop working, and even for those who continued to work, results from HFPSs show fewer hours worked than usual and a sharp decline in their incomes. •• Once lockdown measures are lifted, many return to work and start earning an income again. Yet not all return to work, and for those who do, incomes earned are lower than before. In addition, those in the bottom 40 percent are less likely to recover fully. •• Poorer households have had less access to health care when it was needed. In the Republic of Yemen, only 47 percent of households could access health care, while in Djibouti and Tunisia it was about 63 percent. •• COVID-19 has increased the level of concern about access to food, such as in Djibouti, Gaza, Lebanon, and the Republic of Yemen, where food insecurity is widespread. Across MENA, food insecurity affects the most vulnerable in particular, and especially the poor; those affected by COVID-19-related work stoppages; and economically disadvantaged groups like refugees. • There are promising signs that public assistance is being targeted at the poorest—as shown in Djibouti, Egypt, and Tunisia—although the numbers being reached remain low on average.
