Poverty & Inequality: The Collateral Damage By Pandemic

Poverty and inequality have made the pandemic deadlier, more prolonged and more damaging. A new billionaire has been created every 26 hours since the pandemic began. The world’s richest 10 men have seen their fortunes double, while the incomes of 99% of humanity are worse off because of COVID-19. Meanwhile, an estimated 17 million people have died because of COVID-19. The variation in impact of pandemic due to poverty and inequality is manifested as follows:

• Increase in Poverty Rate: When the coronavirus crisis began, almost half of humanity—3.2 billion people—were living below the World Bank’s poverty line of $5.50 a day. The pandemic has led to loss of livelihoods and a sharp increase in poverty around the world. About 97 million more people are living on less than $1.90 a day because of the pandemic, increasing the global poverty rate from 7.8 to 9.1 percent. There are now 163 million more people projected to be living on less than $5.50 a day than there were when the pandemic began.
• Decline in Income: In 2021, the average incomes of people in the bottom 40 percent of the global income distribution are 6.7 percent lower than pre-pandemic projections, while those of people in the top 40 percent are down 2.8 percent. The reason for this large difference: The poorest 40 percent have not started to recover their income losses, while the top 40 percent has recovered more than 45 percent of their initial income losses. Between 2019 and 2021, the average income of the bottom 40 percent fell by 2.2 percent, while the average income of the top 40 percent fell by 0.5 percent.
• Increase in Loss of Lives: Poverty kills people through lack of access to healthcare, hunger and famine. Hunger-related deaths have been a significant consequence of poverty for decades. The impact of the pandemic on the poorest people is being felt in lives lost. In some countries, the poorest people have been nearly four times more likely to die from COVID-19 as the richest people. The infection fatality rate from COVID-19 in low- and middle income countries is in fact roughly double that in rich countries.
• Nutritional Insecurity: Economic violence through poverty is also felt by children. At the peak of school closures, 369 million children were missing out on crucial school meals as for many of them; the school lunch was their main daily meal. This is not just in low- and middle-income countries, but also in deeply unequal wealthier countries. For poorer families, the value of a meal in school is equivalent to up to 10% of monthly income. The loss of school meals thus means a large additional cost for families.
• Gender Inequality: Pandemic had greater negative impact due to gender disparity.
  • Decline in Education and Labor Force Participation of Women: Worldwide, 740 million women work in the informal economy, and during the first month of the pandemic their income fell by 60%, which amounts to a loss of over $396bn in earnings. The pandemic is also disproportionately pushing women out of employment, especially as lockdowns and social distancing have affected highly feminized workforces in the service sectors, such as tourism.Over 20 million girls are at risk of never returning to school. Women informal workers have been among the most affected economically, facing a “triple crisis” of COVID-19, increased unpaid care work, and insecure and precarious paid work, pushing many further into poverty.
  • Rise in Gender-based Violence: Gender-based violence was projected to increase on average by an estimated 20% during periods of lockdown, meaning that for every three months of lockdown, there would be an additional 15 million cases of intimate partner violence. During COVID-19, women have also been murdered at record high rates. Murders of transgender and gender non-conforming people have also seen a 6% increase, with 98% of them being trans women.
  • Poor Health of Women: In countries across the globe, women have disproportionately borne the brunt of the mental health impacts stemming from the pandemic: nearly three times as many women report increased challenges in relation to mental illness compared with men. Moreover, the numbers of women dying during childbirth or suffering stillbirths have increased due to disruptions to health service provision.
• Racial Inequality: Across the world, the pandemic has hit racialized groups the hardest. It disproportionately impoverishes them and denies them opportunities.Afro-descendant and Indigenous people in Brazil, Dalits in India, and Native American, Latinx, and Black people in the USA face disproportionate lasting impacts from the pandemic.

Governments must center their economic strategies around greater equality. This means far greater economic equality—alongside goals to pursue gender and racial equality— and it must be supported by explicit, time-bound, and measurable milestones. There is a need to make changes to laws and representation that are overly skewed in favor of the richest countries, corporations, and individuals, which in turn helps to perpetuate inequality.