IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/9503.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Impacts of COVID-19 on Household Welfare in Tunisia

Author

Listed:
  • Kokas,Deeksha
  • Lopez-Acevedo,Gladys C.
  • El Lahga,Abdel Rahman
  • Mendiratta,Vibhuti

Abstract

COVID-19 is likely to have a large impact on the welfare of Tunisian households. First, some individuals might be more vulnerable to contracting the disease because their living conditions or jobs make them more susceptible to meeting others or practicing social distancing. Lack of adequate access to health insurance, overcrowded living conditions, and low access to water at home are reasons that make the Tunisian poor more susceptible to getting infected or not being able to seek health care in the event that they contract COVID-19. In addition, the elderly in the poorest households could be more susceptible to COVID-19 due to higher prevalence of intergenerational households among the poor. Second, many sectors of the labor market have experienced an economic slowdown, and those employed in these sectors are likely to experience disproportionate effects. Combining the labor shock and price shock simultaneously, the simulations in this paper show an increase in poverty of 7.3 percentage points under a more optimistic scenario and 11.9 percentage points under the pessimistic scenario, and individuals in sectors such as tourism and construction are expected to fall into poverty due to COVID-19. The paper estimates that the government’s compensatory measures targeted toward the hardest hit are expected to mitigate the increase in poverty. Specifically, the increase in poverty will be 6.5 percentage points under the optimistic scenario if mitigation measures are in place vis-à -vis in their absence, when the increase in poverty is 7.3 percentage points.

Suggested Citation

  • Kokas,Deeksha & Lopez-Acevedo,Gladys C. & El Lahga,Abdel Rahman & Mendiratta,Vibhuti, 2020. "Impacts of COVID-19 on Household Welfare in Tunisia," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9503, The World Bank.
  • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:9503
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/529381608228318922/pdf/Impacts-of-COVID-19-on-Household-Welfare-in-Tunisia.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dingel, Jonathan I. & Neiman, Brent, 2020. "How many jobs can be done at home?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    2. ElKadhi, Zouhair & Elsabbagh, Dalia & Frija, Aymen & Lakoud, Thouraya & Wiebelt, Manfred & Breisinger, Clemens, 2020. "The impact of COVID-19 on Tunisia’s economy, agri-food system, and households," MENA policy notes 5, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kokas, Deeksha & El Lahga, Abdel Rahmen & Lopez-Acevedo, Gladys, 2021. "Poverty and Inequality in Tunisia: Recent Trends," IZA Discussion Papers 14597, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alfani,Federica & Dhrif,Dorra & Molini,Vasco & Pavelesku,Dan & Ranzani,Marco, 2021. "Living Standards of Tunisian Households in the Midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9581, The World Bank.
    2. Piotr Lewandowski & Katarzyna Lipowska & Mateusz Smoter, 2022. "Working from home during a pandemic – a discrete choice experiment in Poland," IBS Working Papers 03/2022, Instytut Badan Strukturalnych.
    3. Lewandowski, Piotr & Lipowska, Katarzyna & Smoter, Mateusz, 2023. "Mismatch in preferences for working from home: Evidence from discrete choice experiments with workers and employers," Ruhr Economic Papers 1026, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    4. Jinwon Kim & Jucheol Moon & Dongyun Yang, 2024. "Pigouvian Congestion Tolls and the Welfare Gain: Estimates for California Freeways," Working Papers 2402, Nam Duck-Woo Economic Research Institute, Sogang University (Former Research Institute for Market Economy).
    5. Juan C. Palomino & Juan G. Rodríguez & Raquel Sebastian, 2023. "The COVID-19 shock on the labour market: poverty and inequality effects across Spanish regions," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(5), pages 814-828, May.
    6. David Baqaee & Emmanuel Farhi, 2020. "Nonlinear Production Networks with an Application to the Covid-19 Crisis," NBER Working Papers 27281, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Graham, James & Ozbilgin, Murat, 2021. "Age, industry, and unemployment risk during a pandemic lockdown," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    8. Basso, Gaetano & Boeri, Tito & Caiumi, Alessandro & Paccagnella, Marco, 2020. "The New Hazardous Jobs and Worker Reallocation," IZA Discussion Papers 13532, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Kouki, Amairisa, 2023. "Beyond the “Comforts” of work from home: Child health and the female wage penalty," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    10. Nizamani, Sarah & Waheed, Muhammad Shahid, 2020. "Poverty and Inequality amid COVID-19 – Evidence from Pakistan’s Labour Market," MPRA Paper 100422, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. John Gathergood & Fabian Gunzinger & Benedict Guttman-Kenney & Edika Quispe-Torreblanca & Neil Stewart, 2020. "Levelling Down and the COVID-19 Lockdowns: Uneven Regional Recovery in UK Consumer Spending," Papers 2012.09336, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2020.
    12. Gottlieb Charles & Grobovšek Jan & Poschke Markus & Saltiel Fernando, 2022. "Lockdown Accounting," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 22(1), pages 197-210, January.
    13. Matthias Dütsch, 2022. "COVID-19 and the labour market: What are the working conditions in critical jobs?," Journal for Labour Market Research, Springer;Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), vol. 56(1), pages 1-17, December.
    14. Brum, Matias & De Rosa, Mauricio, 2021. "Too little but not too late: nowcasting poverty and cash transfers’ incidence during COVID-19’s crisis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    15. Filippos Petroulakis, 2023. "Task Content and Job Losses in the Great Lockdown," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 76(3), pages 586-613, May.
    16. Mirko Licchetta & Giovanni Mattozzi & Rafal Raciborski & Rupert Willis, 2022. "Economic Adjustment in the Euro Area and the United States during the COVID-19 Crisis," European Economy - Discussion Papers 160, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    17. Giovanni Gallo & Silvia Granato & michele Raitano, 2022. "Heterogeneous effects of the Covid-19 crisis on Italian workers’ incomes: the role played by jobs routinization and teleworkability," Center for the Analysis of Public Policies (CAPP) 0180, Universita di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Dipartimento di Economia "Marco Biagi".
    18. Paolo Emilio Cardone, 2023. "Remote working and new forms of work: evidence from INAPP-PLUS," RIEDS - Rivista Italiana di Economia, Demografia e Statistica - The Italian Journal of Economic, Demographic and Statistical Studies, SIEDS Societa' Italiana di Economia Demografia e Statistica, vol. 77(4), pages 76-82, October-D.
    19. Adian,Ikmal & Doumbia,Djeneba & Gregory,Neil & Ragoussis,Alexandros & Reddy,Aarti & Timmis,Jonathan David, 2020. "Small and Medium Enterprises in the Pandemic : Impact, Responses and the Role of Development Finance," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9414, The World Bank.
    20. Malik, Khyati & Kim, Sowon & Cultice, Brian J., 2023. "The impact of remote work on green space values in regional housing markets," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inequality; Labor Markets; Transport Services; Rural Labor Markets;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
    • O54 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Latin America; Caribbean

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:9503. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.