Poorest countries suffering ‘staggering’ hardship during virus | Financial Times

The Financial Times highlights a recent study by CEGA Faculty Director Ted Miguel and coauthors illustrating the devastating effects the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the world’s poorest countries:

“The scale of the economic damage the coronavirus pandemic has wreaked across low and middle-income countries has been starkly illustrated in a new survey of 30,000 households in nine countries.

A median average of 70 per cent of those surveyed reported a drop in income in the early months of the virus’s spread last year, 30 per cent reported a loss of employment and 45 per cent said they had missed or reduced meals, according to the study by researchers at the University of California in Berkeley, Yale University and Northwestern University, among others.

Already-poor people have suffered “staggering” hardship and if the effects persist, tens of millions of already vulnerable households will be pushed into poverty, it warned.

Edward Miguel of Berkeley, a co-author of the study, described its findings as “dire”. “This isn’t any old recession. Its depth and extent are something we have never seen in poor countries,” he said.”

Source: Poorest countries suffering ‘staggering’ hardship during virus