# **1. Introduction**

The COVID-19 pandemic has severely disrupted economic activities worldwide. In 2020, real GDP declined by 1.8 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and by 3.2 percent globally, compared to a projected growth of 3.5 percent in SSA and 3.3 percent globally (International Monetary Fund, 2021). In addition, most countries, and especially African countries have faced large exchange rate depreciations and rising energy and food prices in 2020 and 2021 (Anyanwu and Salami, 2021). Lakner et al. (2021) estimate that in 2020, the COVID-19 crisis increased the number of people below the poverty line by about 120 million in the world and 31 million in SSA. Projections by Mahler et al. (2021) show that while a global rebound was expected in 2021, poverty was expected to further increase in low-income countries, and at a much faster rate than was expected before the pandemic. For low-income countries, poverty was set to increase by 2.7 percent by 2021, compared to the pre-pandemic projection of a 0.2 percent increase (ibid.). These numbers for Sub-Saharan Africa were 2.5 percent compared to 1 percent (pre-pandemic projection).

Beyond these aggregate indicators, systematic evidence of the socio-economic impacts of COVID-19 on households and individuals in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is limited, especially for SSA. Egger et al. (2021) analyze phone survey data collected during April-June 2020 in nine LMICs,<sup>2</sup> including nationally representative samples for seven countries, for which they estimate that 25% to 87% of households lost income and 29% to 49% experienced a loss of employment. Josephson et al. (2021) analyze the early socio-economic impacts of the pandemic in Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria and Uganda, where they estimate that 77% of the population lost income during the pandemic, while 60% of the adult population experienced either moderate or severe food insecurity.

Regarding the labor market impacts of the pandemic, the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that working hours in SSA declined by 7.3 percent in 2020.<sup>3</sup> The estimated working hour losses in Nigeria and Ethiopia, the two most populous countries in Africa, were 9.0 and 8.5 percent. For virtually all countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, however, the ILO estimates are not based on survey data, but are extrapolated from Google Community Mobility Reports and the Oxford Stringency Index (ILO, 2021). However, high frequency economic data are available for several African countries to aid this effort and to inform policies intended to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. For 12 SSA countries with high frequency phone survey data available, Kugler et al. (2021) and Khamis et al. (2021a) document that 24 percent of workers stopped working in the period April-July 2020, ranging from 8% in Madagascar to 62% in Kenya. Kugler et al. (2021) further show that job loss in SSA was higher among women, young workers, highly educated workers, and urban workers, with a particularly significant urban/rural divide.

In this paper, we use high frequency phone survey data from Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, and Uganda to analyze the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on work (including wage employment, self-employment, and farm work) and income, as well as heterogeneity by gender, family composition, education, age, preCOVID-19 industry of work, and between the rural and urban sectors. These four countries represent 34 percent of the Sub-Saharan Africa population and have pre-existing face-to-face panel surveys from 2010 to 2019, which were used as a sample frame for the High-Frequency Phone Surveys (HFPS). The data allow us to track the employment of respondents who were working before the pandemic and analyze individual level indicators, such as job loss and re-employment. We analyze both immediate impacts, during the first few months of the pandemic, as well as medium-run impacts up to February/March 2021.

We find significant inequalities in the labor market impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the first months of the pandemic, women were more likely to lose their job than men and job loss was concentrated among young respondents and in urban areas. Our evidence suggests that the disproportionate job loss among women was not, as one might assume, primarily driven by increased childcare demands related to

> 2 In Africa (Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Sierra Leone), Asia (Bangladesh, Nepal, Philippines), and Latin America (Colombia).

> 3 This indicator represents the percentage of hours lost compared to the baseline (the latest pre-crisis quarter, i.e., the 4th quarter of 2019, seasonally adjusted), adjusting for population aged 15-64 (ILO 2021).

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