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Effect of COVID-19 on Household Food Insecurity and Poverty: Evidence from Ghana

Following the outbreak of COVID-19 and its heavy toll on the global community and humanity, a fierce debate on the pandemic and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) performance nexus has emerged. While the literature on this subject remains highly contested, evidence within the Ghanaian contest is s...

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Autores principales: Bukari, Chei, Aning-Agyei, Millicent Abigail, Kyeremeh, Christian, Essilfie, Gloria, Amuquandoh, Kofi Fosu, Owusu, Anthony Akwesi, Otoo, Isaac Christopher, Bukari, Kpanja Ibrahim
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Netherlands 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8385484/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34456451
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11205-021-02766-9
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author Bukari, Chei
Aning-Agyei, Millicent Abigail
Kyeremeh, Christian
Essilfie, Gloria
Amuquandoh, Kofi Fosu
Owusu, Anthony Akwesi
Otoo, Isaac Christopher
Bukari, Kpanja Ibrahim
author_facet Bukari, Chei
Aning-Agyei, Millicent Abigail
Kyeremeh, Christian
Essilfie, Gloria
Amuquandoh, Kofi Fosu
Owusu, Anthony Akwesi
Otoo, Isaac Christopher
Bukari, Kpanja Ibrahim
author_sort Bukari, Chei
collection PubMed
description Following the outbreak of COVID-19 and its heavy toll on the global community and humanity, a fierce debate on the pandemic and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) performance nexus has emerged. While the literature on this subject remains highly contested, evidence within the Ghanaian contest is sparse. Thus, we present micro-level evidence on how COVID-19 poses a threat to hunger and poverty as SDGs in Ghana. Precisely, we examined the effect of COVID-19 on households' food insecurity and poverty and further analysed gender and locational sub-samples for differential effects. Data on 3905 households were obtained via concurrent online survey and telephone interviews. The results indicate that, on several occasions, a significant number of the sampled households (57.76%) did not get enough food to eat due to the pandemic. The proportion of households that went on several times without clean water for home use and access medicines/medical treatments were 50.52% and 52.22%, respectively. About 60.72% of the sampled households affirmed that, on several times, they did not have enough income due to the pandemic. At the same time, the share of households that suffered food insecurity due to the pandemic was 69.04%. Instrumenting for COVID-19 using distance to the affected communities, we find that a standard deviation increase in COVID-19 is associated with a rise of 0.232 and 0.289 standard deviations in poverty and food insecurity, respectively. Our results are robust to alternative estimation approaches to addressing the endogeneity of COVID-19 and other sensitivity checks. We conclude that Ghana would need to develop a new spectrum of gender- and location-sensitive policies that engender social inclusion as a conduit to expediate the attainment of zero poverty and hunger. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11205-021-02766-9.
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spelling pubmed-83854842021-08-25 Effect of COVID-19 on Household Food Insecurity and Poverty: Evidence from Ghana Bukari, Chei Aning-Agyei, Millicent Abigail Kyeremeh, Christian Essilfie, Gloria Amuquandoh, Kofi Fosu Owusu, Anthony Akwesi Otoo, Isaac Christopher Bukari, Kpanja Ibrahim Soc Indic Res Original Research Following the outbreak of COVID-19 and its heavy toll on the global community and humanity, a fierce debate on the pandemic and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) performance nexus has emerged. While the literature on this subject remains highly contested, evidence within the Ghanaian contest is sparse. Thus, we present micro-level evidence on how COVID-19 poses a threat to hunger and poverty as SDGs in Ghana. Precisely, we examined the effect of COVID-19 on households' food insecurity and poverty and further analysed gender and locational sub-samples for differential effects. Data on 3905 households were obtained via concurrent online survey and telephone interviews. The results indicate that, on several occasions, a significant number of the sampled households (57.76%) did not get enough food to eat due to the pandemic. The proportion of households that went on several times without clean water for home use and access medicines/medical treatments were 50.52% and 52.22%, respectively. About 60.72% of the sampled households affirmed that, on several times, they did not have enough income due to the pandemic. At the same time, the share of households that suffered food insecurity due to the pandemic was 69.04%. Instrumenting for COVID-19 using distance to the affected communities, we find that a standard deviation increase in COVID-19 is associated with a rise of 0.232 and 0.289 standard deviations in poverty and food insecurity, respectively. Our results are robust to alternative estimation approaches to addressing the endogeneity of COVID-19 and other sensitivity checks. We conclude that Ghana would need to develop a new spectrum of gender- and location-sensitive policies that engender social inclusion as a conduit to expediate the attainment of zero poverty and hunger. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11205-021-02766-9. Springer Netherlands 2021-08-25 2022 /pmc/articles/PMC8385484/ /pubmed/34456451 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11205-021-02766-9 Text en © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2021 This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.
spellingShingle Original Research
Bukari, Chei
Aning-Agyei, Millicent Abigail
Kyeremeh, Christian
Essilfie, Gloria
Amuquandoh, Kofi Fosu
Owusu, Anthony Akwesi
Otoo, Isaac Christopher
Bukari, Kpanja Ibrahim
Effect of COVID-19 on Household Food Insecurity and Poverty: Evidence from Ghana
title Effect of COVID-19 on Household Food Insecurity and Poverty: Evidence from Ghana
title_full Effect of COVID-19 on Household Food Insecurity and Poverty: Evidence from Ghana
title_fullStr Effect of COVID-19 on Household Food Insecurity and Poverty: Evidence from Ghana
title_full_unstemmed Effect of COVID-19 on Household Food Insecurity and Poverty: Evidence from Ghana
title_short Effect of COVID-19 on Household Food Insecurity and Poverty: Evidence from Ghana
title_sort effect of covid-19 on household food insecurity and poverty: evidence from ghana
topic Original Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8385484/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34456451
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11205-021-02766-9
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