Policy Research Working Paper 10726

# **Abstract**

How did the economic crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic impact poor households in Sub-Saharan Africa? This paper tackles this question by combining 73 High-Frequency Phone Surveys collected by national governments in 14 countries with older nationally representative surveys containing information on household consumption. In particular, it examines how outcomes differed according to predicted per capita consumption quintiles in the first wave of the survey, and in subsequent waves by households’ predicted per capita consumption. The initial shock affected households throughout the predicted welfare distribution. Households in the bottom 40 percent responded by sharply increasing farming activities between May and July of 2020 and gradually increasing ownership of nonfarm enterprises starting in August. This coincided with an improvement in welfare, as measured by a decline in food insecurity and distressed asset sales among these households during the second half of 2020. With respect to education, children in the bottom quintile were 15 percentage points less likely to engage in learning activities than those in the top quintile in the immediate aftermath of the crisis, and the engagement gap between the bottom 40 and top 60 widened in the summer before narrowing in the fall due to large declines in engagement among the top 60. Poorer households were slightly more likely to report receiving public assistance immediately following the shock, and this difference changed little over the course of 2020. The results highlight the widespread impacts of the crisis both on welfare and children’s educational engagement, the importance of agriculture and household non-farm enterprises as safety nets for the poor, and the substantial recovery made by the poorest households in the year following the crisis.

This paper is a product of the the Poverty and Equity Global Practice and the Development Data Group, Development Economics. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http:// www.worldbank.org/prwp. The authors may be contacted at dnewhouse@worldbank.org. A verified reproducibility package for this paper is available at http://reproducibility.worldbank.org, click **here** for direct access.

<!-- Start of picture text --> TRANSPARENT<br>ANALYSIS<br>G<br>R E<br>N<br>S<br>I P<br>Y E<br>K A<br>C A<br>R P<br>LI R<br>O E<br>O C<br>W R<br>H<br>S<br>P<br><!-- End of picture text --> _The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent._ Produced by the Research Support Team