Kesar, Surbhi and Abraham, Rosa and Lahoti, Rahul and Nath, Paaritosh and Basole, Amit
(2020)
Pandemic, informality, and vulnerability : impact of COVID-19 on livelihoods in India.
Working Paper.
Azim Premji University, Bengaluru.
Abstract
We analyze findings from a large-scale survey of around 5000 respondents across 12 states of
India to study the impact of COVID-19 pandemic containment measures (lockdown) on
employment, livelihoods, food security and access to relief measures. We find a massive increase
in unemployment, an equally dramatic fall in earnings among informal workers, large increases in
food insecurity, depletion of savings and patchy coverage of relief measures. Two-thirds of our
respondents lost work. The few informal workers who were still employed during the lockdown
experienced more than a fifty percent drop in their earnings. Even among regular wage workers,
half received either no salary or reduced salary during the lockdown. Almost eighty percent of
surveyed households experienced a reduction in their food intake and a similar percentage of urban
households did not have enough money to pay next month's rent. We also use a set of logistic
regressions to identify how employment loss and food intake varies with individual and household
level characteristics. We find that migrants and urban Muslims are significantly worse off with
respect to employment and food security. Among employment categories, self-employed workers
were more food secure. The Public Distribution System (PDS) system was seen to have the widest
reach among social security measures. However, even under PDS, 16 percent of vulnerable urban
households did not have access to government rations. Further, half of the respondents reported
not receiving any cash transfers (state or central). We conclude that much more is needed in the
way of direct fiscal support that has been announced thus far by state and central governments in
India.
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