The Effects of Covid-19 on Affordability of Minimum Expenditure Baskets

Introduction

Rationale

The objective of the evaluation was to understand the effects of COVID-19 on the affordability of Minimum Expenditure Baskets (MEB) in the six countries: Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Colombia,
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Nigeria and Syria.

The report focuses on documenting the cost and drivers of change in the cost of MEBs, the proportion of persons that can afford them, and the proportion of income spent on MEBs.

Research questions

Based on the objective of the evaluation described above, two main research questions were defined in order to guide the evaluation.

These research questions are:

1. What was the effect of COVID-19 on the living conditions of households in Bangladesh,
   Burkina Faso, Colombia, DRC, Nigeria, and Syria?
2. How did COVID-19 affect the affordability of minimum expenditure baskets in these countries?
3. How did COVID-19 affect other variables related to multidimensional poverty in these countries?
4. Are there any common cross-cutting factors among these countries?
5. What has been the response from local governments and multilateral agencies to assist households whose living conditions have been affected by COVID-19?

Methodology

The methodology used for the evaluation is a mixed-methods approach where desk review and quantitative primary and secondary data are combined to address the research questions.

Figure 1 summarizes the methodology used. The data sources are the documents related to livelihoods and COVID-19 available on the Data Entry and Exploration Platform (DEEP)1 and relevant secondary data.

This information was triangulated to perform two types of analyses: in-country analysis of the effect of the COVID-19 over the living conditions of households in the six countries, and a crosscountry analysis to identify common factors of this effect.

Final findings emerged from the data triangulation and focused on answering the research questions proposed.