This “living paper” contributes to the global knowledge on how countries are responding to the pandemic by documenting real-time actions in a key area of response – that is, social protection measures planned or implemented by governments.

This second edition of the “living paper” contributes to the global knowledge on how countries are responding to the pandemic by documenting real-time actions in a key area of response – that is, social protection measures planned or implemented by governments. For the purpose of this revie ... w, we organized interventions by social assistance, social insurance and labor market programs. For the latter measures, we deliberately focused on supply-side programs (e.g., mostly wage subsidies and other activation programs). In most cases, data sources include official information published in government websites, while in many cases we reported information from global and national news outlets. In some cases, information was provided directly by country-based experts, while the full database was validated and integrated by regional and country social protection teams at the World Bank. Overall, findings should be considered preliminary and interpreted with caution. more

In this paper they make estimates of the potential short-term economic impact of COVID-19 on global monetary poverty through contractions in per capita household income or consumption. The estimates are based on three scenarios: low, medium, and high global contractions of 5, 10, and 20 per cent; ... we calculate the impact of each of these scenarios on the poverty headcount using the international poverty lines of US$1.90, US$3.20 and US$5.50 per day. The estimates show that COVID poses a real challenge to the UN Sustainable Development Goal of ending poverty by 2030 because global poverty could increase for the first time since 1990 and, depending on the poverty line, such increase could represent a reversal of approximately a decade in the world’s progress in reducing poverty. In some regions the adverse impacts could result in poverty levels similar to those recorded 30 years ago. Under the most extreme scenario of a 20 per cent income or consumption contraction, the number of people living in poverty could increase by 420–580 million, relative to the latest official recorded figures for 2018. more