The economic consequences of COVID-19 on households in low and middle income countries: A mixed method systematic review

Emerging as a global health crisis, the novel Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has become a great threat to the stability and prosperity of economies and households worldwide. With the World Health Organization (WHO) declaring COVID-19 a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) in the earlier months of 2020 (WHO, 2020), COVID-19 has spread rapidly throughout the world- at a pace that has demanded an understanding of COVID-19 that goes beyond the clinical and pharmacological interventions that have since been put in place. COVID-19 has demanded a need for robust study and implementation of public policy, as well as, personal interventions that would work to contain the spread of the virus. COVID-19 has not only adversely affected the health of individuals- it has also adversely affected the economic standing of households worldwide. These adverse effects show that without active means of rapid mitigation, households in LMICs especially, will continue to experience great economic distress. Now, mitigation cannot start without a well-grounded understanding of the problem at hand. This is what this systematic review aims to address. This study aims to locate, appraise and synthesize the best available evidence relating to the economic impact of COVID-19 on households in low- and middle-income countries, through a mixed-methods narrative systematic review. Evidence from both qualitative and quantitative papers will be combined in a single synthesis. This will be done by adopting an “integrated” mixed-method synthesis methodology, whereby both forms of data- quantitative and qualitative-have been combined into a single mixed-methods synthesis. The quantitative data will be grouped into themes and then presented alongside the qualitative findings (which fall under similar themes) in a mixed-methods synthesis. Upon completing the review, it was found that the COVID-19 pandemic has reduced household income for households in LMICs, whilst also introducing an increased degree of volatility to it as well. The pandemic has also led to disruptions to education and employment, thereby disproportionately affecting the poor more than the well-off, as the former, due to structural constraints, failed to transition to online means of education and employment. There was also an increase in household food insecurity, as well as, female poverty. In order to cope, households have since reduced their consumption, and tapped into some of their savings and investments, amongst other forms of coping mechanisms. In response to this economic shock, many governments across LMICs have offered aid in the form of water and food parcels, as well as, cash transfers. It can therefore be said that households in LMICs have been hard-hit and left in worser economic conditions than they were in prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. This is mainly due to the loss of household income as a result of the lockdown measures that were introducedwhich made it difficult for many informal workers to have means of generating income during the period of the pandemic. The fall in remittances also contributed to the loss of total household income. In response to this, policy-makers and practitioners in LMICs need to tailor their social protection policies in a way that prioritises the implementation of pro-poor policies that work to “soften the (economic) blow” of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly for the (economically) vulnerable. They also need to put in place policies which support and protect the incomes of existing informal forms of employment