Publication: Socioeconomic Impacts of COVID-19 in Kenya on Households: Rapid Response Phone Survey, Round 1
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2021-01
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2021-02-23
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The Kenya COVID-19 pandemic has translated into critical socioeconomic impacts on Kenya’s population, which must be understood to inform timely policy responses. School closures, restrictions on movement, bans on social gatherings, and limitations on economic activities have hit Kenya’s socioeconomic life, creating negative consequences, such as income losses and increased food insecurity, which has been exacerbated by a locust invasion. It is crucial to understand the socioeconomic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and identify the most critically affected populations. Such an understanding can enable evidence-based policies and programmatic responses. However, lack of updated socioeconomic data hinders efforts to efficiently allocate resources, for example, to roll out social assistance programs. Thus, timely and frequent socioeconomic data are needed to develop evidence-based measures and help alleviate the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis. The COVID-19 Rapid Response Phone Survey (RRPS) aims to fill socioeconomic data gaps while providing initial evidence to inform targeted policy and programmatic responses. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, face to-face surveys are no longer feasible due to the risk of infection, as well as mobility restrictions. In contrast, phone surveys are highly suited for rapid and frequent data collection. To assess the impacts of COVID-19 and help inform policy responses in Kenya, the World Bank, in collaboration with the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, are implementing RRPSs for: (i) Kenyan and refugee households, (ii) microenterprises run by young entrepreneurs, and (iii) formal enterprises. This note presents the findings and makes policy recommendations for the first of three data collection rounds of the RRPS for Kenyan households, while providing preliminary findings on the RRPS for refugee households and microenterprises.
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“World Bank. 2021. Socioeconomic Impacts of COVID-19 in Kenya on Households: Rapid Response Phone Survey, Round 1. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35173 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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