Anticipating the impact of COVID-19: Pathways and timing of household welfare shocks

This paper summarises the different shocks created by the global covid-19 crisis, and what we know about their timing, magnitude and likely welfare impacts for households in low and lower-middle-income countries. It highlights that the impacts need to be thought through carefully—it can be easy to over or understate them—and that there is considerable heterogeneity of experiences across countries, and across households within any given country.

The paper highlights that taking a long-term view to planning a response by forecasting the various impacts allows us to get ahead of them. It also enables the indicators that should be monitored in various contexts to be more precisely identified. Possible forecasting indicators and anticipatory actions are discussed.