Impact of COVID-19 on poverty and living standards in Ghana: A micro-perspective

Abstract

The novel Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which has become a global epidemic, hit Ghana on 12 March 2020 and, in less than a week, increased by over 300% with two deaths. As of 11 August 2020, Ghana had recorded over 41,000 cases with over 215 deaths. This study seeks to provide a micro-level evidence on how COVID-19 is posing a threat to some of the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly poverty in Ghana. Specifically, the study examined the effect of COVID-19 on poverty and living standards of Ghanaian households. The study further analysed which class of persons within the income distributions has been mostly hit by the pandemic. Data on 3,905 households were obtained via concurrent online survey and telephone interviews. Multiple analytical approaches were employed-Ordinary least squares, probit model and simultaneous quantile regressions. Results showed that COVID-19 had significantly increased the poverty levels of households while deteriorating living standards. The study also discovered that gender and locational heterogeneities exist regarding the impact of COVID-19 with females and rural dwellers mostly disadvantaged. However, simultaneous quantile regression result shows that in terms of overall household consumption, those in the middle and upper classes are profoundly affected compared to those in the lowest class. A ABOUT THE AUTHOR Chei Bukari is a Course Demonstrator and researcher in the School of Economics at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. He has over five years of teaching and extensive research experience. His area of research includes poverty, inequality, finance and corruption. He has several research papers in refereed journals in these fields of interest. He has worked with several reputable organization including Ghana Statistical Service. The major contribution of this study is that COVID-19 is undermining Ghana's efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) particularly poverty and hunger. By implication, while governments must not be complacent in their fight against COVID-19, post-COVID-19 policies will require extra-efforts if agenda 2030 (i.e., SDGs) is to be achieved.

Analyzing and visualizing global research trends on COVID-19 linked to sustainable development goals

“…Moreover, the investigation of the most impacted persons by the pandemic. Bukari et al ( 2021 ), for example, concluded that the pandemic had significantly deteriorated standards of living, increased poverty rates, and impacted mostly female class in Ghana. A major issue of interest that arose in association with COVID-19 pandemic is the need to better coordinate the efforts of global health actors to attain health-related SDGs (Spicer et al, 2020 ).…”

Dynamic livelihood impacts of COVID-19 on different rural households in mountainous areas of China

“…The epidemic resulted in the economic growth in the first quarter of 2020 is -6.8%, and 2.3% in the whole year of 2020, which was far lower than that of 2019 (6.0%) [25]. The containment measures, such as the lockdowns, quarantine measures and social distancing, contributed to protect people from infecting the disease but disrupted the livelihoods of millions of populations [26]. The economic burden of these strict control measures is remarkably heavy [9,10].…”

Estimates of the COVID-19 Infection Fatality Rate for 48 African Countries: A Model-Based Analysis

“…According to recent estimates, 3 billion people throughout the world do not have access to soap or water at home, 900 million children do not have access to soap and water at school, and up to 40% of health care institutions lack hand hygiene equipment [36]. On average, according to our analysis, the proportion of the population in Africa with access to water and soap hand-washing facilities is 35% (95% CI: [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44].…”

“…The study found that in the absence of intervention, peak infection caseloads are maximized, but there are no variations in infection levels between poor and non-poor people. Another study by Chie et al investigated the effect of COVID-19 on poverty and living standards in Ghana [43]. The study went on to look at which groups of people within the income distributions were the worst impacted by the epidemic.…”