Birds of a feather flock together? Diversity and spread of COVID-19 cases in India

Arresting COVID infections requires community collective action that is difficult to achieve in a socially and economically diverse setting. Using district level data from India, we examine the effects of caste and religious fragmentation along with economic inequality on the growth rate of reported cases. The findings indicate positive effects of caste homogeneity while observing limited impact of economic inequality and religious homogeneity. However, the gains from higher caste homogeneity are seen to erode with the unlocking procedure after the nationwide lockdown. We find that community cohesion through caste effect is relatively dominant in rural areas even when mobility restrictions are withdrawn. Our findings indicate planners should prioritize public health interventions in caste-wise heterogeneous areas to compensate for the absence of community cohesion. The importance of our study lies in empirically validating the causal pathway between homogeneity and infection and providing a basis for zoning infection prone areas

THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC, POST-PANDEMIC CHALLENGES AND POVERTY DYNAMICS IN BANGLADESH: EVIDENCE FROM A LONGITUDINAL HOUSEHOLD SURVEY

Bangladesh has witnessed remarkable economic growth and development in the last three decades. However, the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by the Russia-Ukraine war and the global energy crisis, has put Bangladesh to the test on several frontiers. There is a growing need to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the post-pandemic challenges on poverty, inequality, employment, education, healthcare, and food security in Bangladesh. This study aims to provide insights into these parameters based on a nationally representative household survey.The 2023 survey is built on the SANEM-GED household survey convened in 2018 across Bangladesh with 10,500 households from 500 Primary Sampling Units (PSUs). The survey was conducted during October/November 2023. Among the 10,500 households, the survey team was able to reach 8,765 households. The 2023 survey questionnaire included questions pertinent to households’ basic characteristics, education, employment, assets, COVID-19-led major challenges and coping strategies, social protection, health, vaccination scenario of coronavirus vaccine, migration, and remittances, along with pre-COVID, during COVID and post COVID household income and expenditure information. Moreover, the questionnaire included a separate section to capture the ongoing inflationary pressure, food insecurity and household coping strategies. In this study, poverty is measured following two approaches: conventional consumption expenditure-based poverty and multidimensional poverty based on (i) education and (ii) health and standard of living indicators. The poverty line for the consumption expenditure based approach is measured following the Cost of Basic Needs (CBN) method for each of the 20 strata (eight rural, eight urban, and four metropolitan areas). Using the upper poverty line, the incidence of poverty is estimated at 20.7% at the national level, 21.6% in rural areas, and 18.7% in urban areas. Using the lower poverty line, the incidence of extreme poverty isestimated at 7.9% at the national level, 8.9% in rural areas, and 5.4% in urban areas. At the divisional level, the highest poverty rate was estimated in Rangpur and Barisal, 42.9% and 32.5%, respectively. Notably, while the rural poverty in Bangladesh has decreased from 24.5% in 2018 to 21.6% in 2023, the urban poverty rate has increased from 16.3% to 18.7%.A similar trend is observed in multidimensional poverty. The rural multidimensional poverty rate has fallen from 30.4% to 27.6%, while in the urban area, it has increased from 16.8% in 2018 to 18% in 2023. The reasons behind the rise in urban poverty, both in terms of the CBN poverty line and the multidimensional approach, are twofold. (i) Urban areas constitute a large proportion of the vulnerable poor who migrated to the cities out of poverty or due to climate shock, etc. Significant shocks, such as the recent price hike, would make these vulnerable people fall below the poverty line. And (ii) the existing social security programmes do not cover urban areas extensively – making many urban households more vulnerable to shocks.Along with a rising poverty rate, this study also finds rising inequality in the country. Regarding consumption Gini, inequality at the national level grew slightly from 0.31 in 2018 to 0.32 in 2023. However, when observed from the point of the income share of the rich and the poor, i.e. the share of income of the richest 5% of the households compared to the poorest 20%, the ratio has increased from 2.1 in 2018 to 5.4 in 2023. Correspondingly, the ratio of 11 expenditure shares of the richest 5 per cent to that of the poorest 20 per cent has increased from 1.3 in 2020 to 2.1 in 2023. One critical point to remember is that since most ultra-rich households could not be included in the survey, particularly from the urban areas, the real impact on inequality could be much larger than these findings.The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly impacted the educational sector, leading to great learning loss due to the education institutions' prolonged closure. On average, the schools in Bangladesh were closed for more than 450 days. During this time, online learning programmes were launched to keep students engaged, as conventional instructions in class were not feasible. However, neither all educational institutes nor all students were able to participate. This study finds that only 20% of the rural and 33% of the urban schools had distance learningprogrammes. Moreover, participation in the online classes differed widely among households from different income quantiles. Only 8% of the poorest income households participated in online/ distance learning programmes compared to 40.3% in the richest quintile households. Reasons accounted for not participating in online/TV classes include - (i) a lack of classes ordistance learning activities, (ii) unavailability of a device such as a phone or television, (ii) a lack of internet access, (iii) slow internet connectivity, (iv) cost of internet, (v) being not accustomed to technology, etc.In the post-pandemic scenario, this study finds that 15% of the school-going-aged children (aged 5-15) are not attending schools in 2023. This is a 2-percentage point rise compared to 2018. Moreover, this rate has increased among the poorest income households while decreasing in the richest income cohort. As such, almost one-quarter of the children from the poorest 20% of households are not attending school, compared to only 9% of the childrenfrom the richest 20% of households.In terms of healthcare, we observe that only 8.5% of the surveyed population suffered from COVID-19-like symptoms between March 2020 and October/November 2023, while less than one quarter undertook the test. Nevertheless, one of Bangladesh's successes in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic was rolling out the vaccine on time. Bangladesh started administering the COVID-19 vaccines on 27 January 2021. As can be observed, 77% of the males and 80% of the females (aged five years or more) received more than two dosages of the vaccine. Another important aspect to note is that there is no difference in the distribution of vaccine rates between rural and urban areas. One consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic on healthcare could be a large rise in per capita health expenditure between 2018 and 2023. Compared to 2018, the average per capita health expenditure increased by more than threefold in 2023 to BDT 1,704 per month. However, the rise is not symmetrical across all income groups. The rise was just twofold for the poorest 20% of the households, while for the richest 20% of the households, the rise was sixfold.Most of the employment at the national level comes from the services sector (47%), followed by agriculture (36%) and industry (18%). The concentration of agricultural employment is more prominent in rural areas than in urban areas and among women than men. When compared to 2018, the overall unemployment rate in Bangladesh slightly increased from 3.2 per cent to 4 per cent in 2023, primarily due to the rise in the male unemployment 12rate twofold in both rural and urban areas. A similar trend is observed for the youth male unemployment rate, which has increased from 5.4% in 2018 to 11.6% in 2023. Between March 2020 and December 2020, in the rural setting, almost all males (96.8 per cent) and most of the females (93.2 per cent) experienced a decrease in salary. A similar situation was observed in the urban counterparts. In April –June 2020, the income was at the lowest for both genders and areas. Among all the divisions, the Rangpur division had the lowest average income in the month of lowest-earning in both the rural and urban settings.Moreover, the average income of rural areas was higher in Barishal, Chittagong and Rajshahi divisions than urban ones. Regarding self-employed (non-agriculture enterprise), the rural counterparts of the Sylhet division remained closed for the longest period during the pandemic. In the rural areas of Barishal and Sylhet division and the urban settings of Rangpur, no businesses were closed for more than six months. Around 19.3 per cent of the urban businesses of the Dhaka division remained closed for more than six months. For the selfemployed(non-agriculture non-enterprise), in the rural setting, around 70.1% reported thatthey had to close business during the pandemic, whereas the percentage was 73.9 in the urban counterparts of the Barishal division. Rangpur division had a notable difference in the closure period in the rural (70%) and urban counterparts (57.1%).In terms of the impact of the pandemic on wage employment, this study finds that 54% of the males and 44% of the females lost their jobs during the pandemic. Most of these workers remained unemployed for longer than 3-4 months. Almost all these workers faced some cutdown in their wages. More than three-quarters of self-employed workers in the non-farm sector reported business closures during the pandemic. More than half of them had to closethe business for a period of 1-3 months. In the case of agriculture, livestock, poultry or fisheries, the households faced challenges related to high input prices, low prices of the produced, shortage of labour, transportation problems, etc., during the pandemic.This study also observed the impact of the pandemic on migrant households. Since the beginning of the pandemic, many international migrant workers had to return to Bangladesh permanently. As a proportion of the migrant worker stock in 2018, nationally, more than 9% of the international migrant households had a permanent returnee migrant worker during the survey in 2023. At the divisional level, the highest proportion of these returnee migrants (as% of all migrant stock at the divisional level in 2018) is in Mymensingh (20%), Chittagong (11.2%), and Dhaka (10.2%). The major reasons behind these returnee migrants include losing jobs during the pandemic (33%), contractual issues (20%), disputes with the employer (14.7%), false/visa or victim of fraud (4%), amongst others. Moreover, among these permanent returnee migrant workers, nearly one-third remained unemployed at the time of the survey in October/November 2023. Given the high cost of migration and the households’ financing strategies for international migration, this phenomenon of returnee migrant workers has important policy implications.The major shock experienced by the households in both rural and urban areas during October 2022-September 2023 period was the unusually high price level of the essential commodities (78% in the rural and 76% in the urban). Apart from inflationary pressure, other shocks included high prices of agricultural inputs, crop/livestock diseases, reduction in the earnings of the household member, floods, low prices of crops, illnesses of the earning member, etc. In response to the recent shocks, the primary coping strategy undertaken by the households was changing their dietary patterns involuntarily (59%), followed by depleted savings (45%), obtaining credits (40%), unconditional help from friends or relatives (33%), reduced expenditure on health and education (8%), etc. In addition, in rural areas, households sold animal stock (11%), or changed cropping practices (7%). The proportion of households receiving support from the local governments was around 5% in rural and urban areas.This study placed particular attention on the impact of the recent inflationary pressure on households. As observed, between April 2023 and October/November 2023, 70% of households reported that their household expenditure had increased. In addition to the price hike, the incomes of a large proportion of households remained unchanged or fell between April and October 2023. As such, the real income of most of the households fell sharply during this period. In response to the price hike, this study finds that 70% of the households changed their food habits, 35% reduced non-food expenditure, 28% resorted to borrowing, and 17% depleted savings, amongst others. Such a large cut down on food consumption habits puts households on the brink of food insecurity. This study measures food insecurity following FAO guidelineson the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES). Between April and October/November 2023, the food insecurity experience scale (FIES) has worsened for poor and non-poor households across all regions. Among poor households, moderate food insecurity has increased by five percentage points (from 25% in Apr’23 to 30% in Oct/Nov’23), while severe food insecurityhas increased by three percentage points (from 4% to 7% of the poor population). Poor from the urban areas are more food insecure than rural: 29% of the rural poor households and 32% of the urban poor households were categorized as moderately food insecure in October/November 2023. In both rural and urban areas, severe food insecurity was found tobe 7% among poor households.Based on the survey findings, this study recommends five key policies. First, the government needs to roll out social security programmes across the nation as stipulated in the National Social Security Strategy (NSSS). Particular attention must be given to the urban poor and new poor households. Second, there should be more budgetary allocation and specific policies for the education sector to address the issue of children missing in education, reduce school dropout rates, and recoup the learning loss impeded during the pandemic. Third, it is high time the government emphasises increasing the tax net and restructuring the existing tax frame. This is because increasing budgetary allocations for the education and social security programmes would require a larger fiscal space. Fourth, the government needs to undertake more active labour market policies to reduce the unemployment rate among men, youth, and permanent returnee migrant workers. And lastly, the government must undertake alternative and complementary policies to reduce the inflationary pressures on households. This should include, more increased monitoring of the market, as well as liberalising the import tariff on many of the staple foods in Bangladesh. An increased supply of essential foods (such as dairy, meat, fruits, etc.) would help Bangladesh to tame down the price level. This should be complemented with supporting fiscal and monetary policies

Child disability and maternal work participation : new evidence from India

Using data from the India Human Development Survey, this paper analyses the relationship between child disability and maternal work participation for India. The authors’ findings suggest a significant positive relationship between child disability and the work participation of the urban mothers who are wives of household heads. These mothers are 1.27 times as likely to participate in labour market as mothers (wives in urban areas) without a disabled child. However, for the same mothers, child disability significantly affects the weekly work hours of those participating in the labour market in a negative manner with presence of a disabled child reducing the weekly work hours by 3.6 hours. For the rural mothers and the mothers in urban areas who are household heads, our findings do not suggest any significant association between child disabilities and their work participation (or weekly work hours)