Effect of COVID-19 on Household Food Insecurity and Poverty: Evidence from Ghana.

Following the outbreak of COVID-19 and its heavy toll on the global community and humanity, a fierce debate on the pandemic and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) performance nexus has emerged. While the literature on this subject remains highly contested, evidence within the Ghanaian contest is sparse. Thus, we present micro-level evidence on how COVID-19 poses a threat to hunger and poverty as SDGs in Ghana. Precisely, we examined the effect of COVID-19 on households' food insecurity and poverty and further analysed gender and locational sub-samples for differential effects. Data on 3905 households were obtained via concurrent online survey and telephone interviews. The results indicate that, on several occasions, a significant number of the sampled households (57.76%) did not get enough food to eat due to the pandemic. The proportion of households that went on several times without clean water for home use and access medicines/medical treatments were 50.52% and 52.22%, respectively. About 60.72% of the sampled households affirmed that, on several times, they did not have enough income due to the pandemic. At the same time, the share of households that suffered food insecurity due to the pandemic was 69.04%. Instrumenting for COVID-19 using distance to the affected communities, we find that a standard deviation increase in COVID-19 is associated with a rise of 0.232 and 0.289 standard deviations in poverty and food insecurity, respectively. Our results are robust to alternative estimation approaches to addressing the endogeneity of COVID-19 and other sensitivity checks. We conclude that Ghana would need to develop a new spectrum of gender- and location-sensitive policies that engender social inclusion as a conduit to expediate the attainment of zero poverty and hunger. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11205-021-02766-9.

Analysing COVID-19 outcomes in the context of the 2019 Global Health Security (GHS) Index.

INTRODUCTION: The Global Health Security Index benchmarks countries' capacities to carry out the functions necessary to prevent, detect and respond to biological threats. The COVID-19 pandemic served as an opportunity to evaluate whether the Index contained the correct array of variables that influence countries' abilities to respond to these threats; assess additional variables that may influence preparedness; and examine how the impact of preparedness components change during public health crises. METHODS: Linear regression models were examined to determine the relationship between excess mortality per capita for the first 500 days of countries' COVID-19 pandemic and internal Index variables, as well as external variables including social cohesion; island status; perceived corruption; elderly population size; previous epidemic experience; stringency of non-pharmaceutical interventions; and social and political polarisation. RESULTS: COVID-19 outcomes were significantly associated with sociodemographic, political and governance variables external to the 2019 Index: social cohesion, reduction in social polarisation and reduced perceptions of corruption were consistently correlated with reduced excess mortality throughout the pandemic. The association of other variables assessed by the Index, like epidemiological workforce robustness, changed over time. Fixed country features, including geographic connectedness, larger elderly population and lack of prior coronavirus outbreak experience were detrimental to COVID-19 outcomes. Finally, there was evidence that countries that lacked certain capacities were able to develop these over the course of the pandemic. CONCLUSIONS: Additional sociodemographic, political and governance variables should be included in future indices to improve their ability to characterise preparedness. Fixed characteristics, while not directly addressable, are useful for establishing countries' inherent risk profile and can motivate those at greater risk to invest in preparedness. Particular components of preparedness vary in their impact on outcomes over the course of the pandemic, which may inform resource direction during ongoing crises. Future research should seek to further characterise time-dependent impacts as additional COVID-19 outcome data become available.

Impact of COVID-19 on poverty and living standards in Ghana: A micro perspective (preprint)

The novel Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which has become a global epidemic, hit Ghana on 12th March 2020 and, in less than a week, increased by over 300 percent with two deaths. As of 11th June 2020, Ghana had recorded over 11,000 cases with 48 deaths. This study seeks to provide a micro-level evidence on how COVID-19 is posing a threat to some of the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly poverty and hunger in Ghana. Specifically, the study examined the effect of COVID-19 on poverty and living standards of Ghanaian households. It also analyzed which class of persons within the income distributions is mostly hit by the pandemic. Data on 3,905 households were obtained via concurrent online survey and telephone interviews. Multiple analytical approaches were employed: Ordinary least squares, probit model and simultaneous quantile regressions. The results showed that COVID-19 had significantly increased the poverty levels of households, while deteriorating living standards. The study also showed that gender and locational heterogeneities exist regarding the impact of COVID-19 with females and rural dwellers mostly disadvantaged. However, the simultaneous quantile regression showed that in terms of overall household consumption, those in the middle and upper classes were heavily affected compared to those in the lowest class. A key policy implication from this study is that Ghana needs to broaden its social protection programmes to assist both the new poor and existing poor.