This project uses high-frequency phone surveys to track the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on the economic situation of vulnerable, rural households over three months, enabling researchers to descriptively understand the economic impact of the crisis on poor, rural communities.
The households are taken from a sample from 120 villages in Kyenjojo and Kagadi districts of Western Uganda. These villages were chosen in collaboration with the district government as particularly isolated and disadvantaged villages with limited access to government services. The households in the sample are therefore a representative selection of households from these villages and will enable the team to gain a clear idea of the economic impact on the entire distribution during the covid-19 crisis in rural Ugandan communities.
Working with the NGO Raising the Village (RTV), researchers conducted the phone surveys every two weeks with a sample of 1300 households in 120 villages of Western Uganda to understand:
- changes in expenditure (e.g. lower food consumption due to price rises and decline in incomes);
- changes in income (particularly casual labour and non-farm enterprises);
- shock coping strategies (e.g. needing to sell livestock or assets);
- and changes in health status and access to health care, as well as effects on mental health and relationship quality of couples.
This survey data enables researchers to see the complete time path of the impact of the crisis on these households’ economic situation as compared to the baseline survey, conducted immediately before the lockdown, both in the short term in the form of current income and consumption but also over the long term through the selling-off of assets and a decline in health.
Additionally, the team analyse effects on particularly vulnerable households, including female-headed households and those featuring elderly members, speaking to intra-household impacts of the crisis by seeing whether there are increased domestic disputes, potentially adding to the negative impact on women.
