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The first victims of Covid-19 in developing countries? The most vulnerable workers to the lockdown of the Tunisian economy

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  • Mohamed Ali Marouani

    (UMR « Développement et Société », IEDES / Université Paris1-Panthéon-Sorbonne, PSL, IRD, LEDa, DIAL)

  • Phuong Le Minh

    (UMR « Développement et Société », IRD and Université Paris1-Panthéon-Sorbonne)

Abstract

While the Covid-19 pandemic had both health and economic e ects in rich countries, the first wave impacted many developing countries’ mainly through its economic and social consequences. The objective of this paper is to perform a first-round assessment of the potential consequences on workers using the Tunisian labor force survey. Three main factors of vulnerability are investigated, the inability to work from home, being part of a non essential industry and working for the private sector. We find that the most a ected are craftsmen, machine operators and elementary occupations in non-agricultural activities. The typically vulnerable worker is a young individual with low education, a man if self-employed and a woman with a temporary contract and lower earnings if wage-earner. When we take into account self-employed workers, the managers’ category becomes the most a ected among high and medium skill occupations. When we look at regional e ects, we unexpectedly find that the coastal regions (except the capital) are the most fragile. This is due to the fact that most of the manufacturing, tourism and international transport activities are located in coastal regions.

Suggested Citation

  • Mohamed Ali Marouani & Phuong Le Minh, 2020. "The first victims of Covid-19 in developing countries? The most vulnerable workers to the lockdown of the Tunisian economy," Working Papers DT/2020/06, DIAL (Développement, Institutions et Mondialisation).
  • Handle: RePEc:dia:wpaper:dt2020-06
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    teleworking; employment; COVID-19; lockdown; vulnerability;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • O30 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - General
    • R12 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)
    • R32 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Other Spatial Production and Pricing Analysis

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