Introduction How did the economic impact of the crisis caused by Covid-19 impacted poor households in Sub-Saharan Africa? While statistics on infections and deaths suggest that Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) may have escaped the worst of Covid-19, the economic cost was major. Poverty in the region was projected to increase by 2 percentage points or more in 2020 (Montes et al. 2020 and Lakner et al. 2021). While the full extent of the economic damage is still unknown, data from phone surveys collected since the pandemic provide an indication of the adverse impact on livelihoods in the region.<sup>1</sup> However, little is known about how impacts differed for poor and wealthy households within countries. This note aims to help fill this gap in order to better understand the distributional impacts of the crisis and inform recovery efforts.

We combine data collected through 73 phone surveys in SSA since the early stages of the global pandemic with richer multi-topic household surveys collected prior to the pandemic to examine how the impact of Covid-19 differed for poorer and wealthier households, as measured by predicted household per capita consumption. There are six main findings:

1. The initial impact of Covid-19 on the prevalence of income declines and the ability to work as usual was widespread throughout the predicted consumption distribution.

2. During the summer of 2020, there were large (20 pp) increases in the share of households in the bottom 40 percent that engaged in farming activities, and a more gradual increase 10 pp increase in the share of these households that owned or partially owned a non-farm enterprise.

3. During the latter part of 2020 and early 2021, food insecurity and the incidence of distressed asset sales declined faster for the bottom 40 than the top 60 percent. Conversely, the prevalence of income declines and the inability to work as usual declined faster for the top 60 percent, who were better able to cope with the medium-term impacts of the crisis.

4. Children in the bottom 40 percent were less likely to engage in educational activities in the immediate aftermath of the crisis. This disadvantaged narrowed greatly over the course of December 2020, as the share of children engaging in learning or educational activities fell about 10 percentage points for the bottom 40 and about 17 pp for the top 60 both between June and December 2020.

5. Public government assistance slightly favored poorer households in the spring and summer of 2020, a pattern that changed little as the crisis evolved.

Overall, the results indicate that the initial impacts of the Covid-19 were widespread throughout the predicted welfare distribution, and that the agricultural sector and establishment of non-farm enterprises acted as an important safety net. The movement back to agriculture may have helped poorer households reduce food insecurity and distressed asset sales, but may have delayed their ability to stem declines in income. Households faced serious challenges maintaining their children’s engagement with educational activities during the summer, and households in the bottom 40 were slightly more likely than those in the top 60 to benefit from public assistance throughout 2020.

> 1 See Bundervoet et al, 2021, Khamis et al, 2021, Dang et al, 2020, and Gupta et al, 2020.

2