Effects of countercyclical policies on women’s and men’s incomes during the COVID-19 pandemic: a gender analysis of personal taxes and transfers in Colombia, Ecuador and the Plurinational State of Bolivia

At the fourteenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, just weeks before the onset of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, the region’s governments undertook to “implement gender-sensitive countercyclical policies, in order to mitigate the impact of economic crises”. Against this backdrop, this document analyses the impact that taxes and transfers targeted to households and their members had on the disposable income of women and men between 2019 and 2020 in Colombia, Ecuador and the Plurinational State of Bolivia —countries for which harmonized tax and transfer microsimulation models are maintained by the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University (UNU-WIDER). These models are used to construct counterfactual income distributions for the purpose of separating the automatic effects of pre-existing policies from those of the policies implemented in response to the emergency. The study uses the COVID-19 crisis as a case study for analysing some of the gender impacts of fiscal policies. It identifies lessons learned and makes recommendations to prevent gender inequalities from deepening in future economic, health or social crises in the region, while promoting a fiscal system that fosters gender equality and the safeguarding of women’s rights.