The Impact of Covid-19 Pandemic Towards Socioeconomic Wellbeing of Rural Community in Malaysia

The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted the socio-economic well-being of people either in urban or rural areas. The Covid-19 cases and fatalities that concentrated in major urban areas in Malaysia. However, as the pandemic progressed, the rural community faced health vulnerability due to the Covid-19 pandemic threat. Among the significant impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic are income generation, economic activity work, and health vulnerability, especially the rural community involved in rural economic activities such as agriculture and fishery. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the socio-economic well-being of rural communities in Malaysia. The case study selection is in Mersing, Pontian and Batu Pahat involving three villages using GIS mapping. The methodology used is quantitative research through a household survey conducted using 182 heads of households based on the economic and social dimensions. The finding reveals that most of the target group experienced a decline in income generation, economic activity restriction, and education issues. Furthermore, there are also decreasing in the economically active population (age 15-60) in the village. As a result, this study is essential in formulating a post-Covid-19 recovery plan regarding socio-economic well-being impacts and the revival of rural community well-being in Malaysia through Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping.

Modelling the Distributional Impact of the COVID-19 Crisis.

The COVID-19 emergency has had a dramatic impact on market incomes and income-support policies. The lack of timely available data constrains the estimation of the scale and direction of recent changes in the income distribution, which in turn constrains policymakers seeking to monitor such developments. We overcome the lack of data by proposing a dynamic calibrated microsimulation approach to generate counterfactual income distributions as a function of more timely external data than are available in dated income surveys. We combine nowcasting methods using publicly available data and a household income generation model to perform the first calibrated simulation based upon actual data, aiming to assess the distributional implications of the COVID-19 crisis in Ireland. Overall, we find that the crisis had an equalizing real-time effect for both gross and disposable incomes, notwithstanding the significant hardship experienced by many households.

Culture and Business in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Outlook on Kenya

The culture of doing business in Sub-Saharan Africa involves the engagement of family members (Waweru, Mutuma & Chege, 2015) to participate in income generating activities. Each member of the family has a role towards sustenance of the family. This culture is “nurtured” at birth and passed on from one generation to another as traditions, customs, societal norms, unwritten codes of conduct and tend to be resistant to change (Bruton et al., 2008). Sub-Saharan African’s have a mixed way of engaging in business activities that ranges from the formal, the informal, and the indigenous (see Madichie et al., 2021;Madichie et al., 2020;Nkamnebe & Madichie, 2010;Madichie, 2005). The indigenous, informal and formal economic activities are best understood as social groupings whose industrious activities are subject to varying legal statuses, state intervention, and fabrication of relations rather than as dual sectors (Portes et al., 1986). The tradition in Kenya bestows on a father, as the head of the family, a major role of a bread winner in the family unit. As the patriarch, a father has a duty to provide for his family (Gupta et al., 2010). The mother’s role is to supplement what the father brings home, while the role of the children is to assist the mother in supplementing family’s sustenance through income generation. If a father is employed or engaged in a formal business, then other members of the family have an obligation to assist in income generation for family sustenance through indigenous methods that are perceived to have value in their own right (Blunt & Jones, 1997). These types of business activities include farming and raising livestock, maintaining indigenous retail shops (known as kiosks) and selling of food items. It is worthwhile to note that these activities are not restricted to urban areas, but are also carried out in rural areas. The current study adds to the limited literature on business activities and culture in sub-Saharan Africa which is currently largely concentrated on the formal sector (see for example Minnis, 2006;Pedersen & McCormick, 1999) and discusses the impact of the recent pandemic (COVID-19) on business activities of women and children who still had to generate income to either supplement father’s income or to sustain the family. © 2021 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

A Microsimulation Analysis of the Distributional Impact over the Three Waves of the COVID-19 Crisis in Ireland

This paper relies on a microsimulation framework to undertake an analysis of the distributional implications of the COVID-19 crisis over three waves. Given the lack of real-time survey data during the fast moving crisis, it applies a nowcasting methodology and real-time aggregate administrative data to calibrate an income survey and to simulate changes in the tax benefit system that attempted to mitigate the impacts of the crisis. Our analysis shows how crisis-induced income-support policy innovations combined with existing progressive elements of the tax-benefit system were effective in avoiding an increase in income inequality at all stages of waves 1-3 of the COVID-19 emergency in Ireland. There was, however, a decline in generosity over time as benefits became more targeted. On a methodological level, our paper makes a specific contribution in relation to the choice of welfare measure in assessing the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on inequality. © 2021, O’Donoghue et al.

Implications of Covid-19 for Labour and Employment in India.

The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed the world into an unprecedented crisis and uncertainty, calling to expedite the implementation of the Centenary Declaration. It called upon constituents to pursue 'with unrelenting vigour its [ILO] constitutional mandate for social justice by further developing its human centred approach to the future of work'. It called for putting workers' rights and the needs, aspirations and rights of all people at the heart of economic, social and environmental policies. The international community and ILO's constituents have engaged in a collective endeavour to tackle the devastating human impact of the pandemic, but more is needed.