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‘Poor's income halved, days of work fell by 3/4th during COVID-19 lockdown in Delhi'

Last Updated 02 June 2020, 08:37 IST

Their income fell by more than half and the days worked in a week by almost three-fourth during COVID-19 lockdown but the poor and non-migrant workers in Delhi widely adopted practices like wearing masks and hand-washing following "extreme fear and unparalleled media coverage", a study has said.

The data collected by the researchers, however, showed no "substantive changes" over the course of the lockdown in rates of hunger, product scarcity, ability to access medical care, or security as the negative income shocks were mitigated by the Delhi government’s widespread food assistance programs, which were accessed by more than one-third of their sample.

At the same time, the working paper 'Job Loss and Behavioural Change: The Unprecedented Effects of the India Lockdown in Delhi' warned that "relatively high rates of depression, challenges in food supply chains, and dwindling levels of savings" pose serious concerns about the cumulative effects of the lockdown.

The working paper, by Kenneth Lee, Harshil Sahai and Michael Greenstone of the University of Chicago and Patrick Baylis of the University of British Columbia, was based on the responses of over 1,392 people from the poor and non-migrant workers collected during the first seven weeks of lockdown, which started from March 25.

"The urban poor may be more prone to the economic shocks associated with extreme social distancing mandates, due to their likely employment in wage-paying occupations which tend to require physical work, and low levels of savings which are necessary for smoothing out short-term fluctuations in income," it said.

According to the study, their weekly income fell by 56.5% during this period and the days they worked a week by 73.3%. During the Round 1 (first four weeks of lockdown) of their study, their mean weekly income fell by 38.9% and it fell further by 77.5% in Round 2 (weeks five to seven) as more and more workers were forced into unpaid leave.

"By Round 2, weekly income has fallen to zero for 89.2% of the sample. Relatedly, average days worked over the past week falls from 5.2 to 1.3 days, a decline of 74.6% percent, by Round 2," it said.

At the same time, the study said, there was "widespread adoption" of recommended public health directives.

"For instance, mask usage rises by 72.9 percentage points (pp); time spent indoors increases by 50.5 pp; smoking decreases by 12.9 pp, and regular hand washing rises by 10.0 pp. The magnitudes of these effects are large, and in certain cases, rival or exceed the impacts of past interventions (to increase handwashing or encourage mask usage, for example)...." it said.

Referring to the low usage of masks distributed by the Delhi government during November 2019 when the city was hit by a high level of pollution, the study said the COVID-19 crisis, in contrast, saw using of masks becoming "near universal...despite relatively low levels of air pollution".

"It is likely that the behavioural response to the current crisis, relative to the air pollution crisis, has been driven by a combination of factors, chief among them the extreme level of concern and fear about the coronavirus, and the unprecedented level of media coverage of the pandemic. For example, 79.7% of respondents in our sample reported feeling “extremely concerned” about COVID-19. In comparison, less than 40% percent of respondents felt this way about air pollution during the peak pollution period between October and December 2018," it said.

However, the study warned that it remains to be seen whether the large behavioural changes one observe will persist as the novelty, fear, and media coverage of COVID-19 subside, or if access to basic necessities is substantially compromised.

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(Published 02 June 2020, 06:32 IST)

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