Falling living standards during the COVID-19 crisis

Countries around the world face difficult policy choices along the path to economic recovery from COVID-19. While much public discussion focuses on “lives” and “livelihoods,” our data in this study suggest this is a false dichotomy. Mushfiq Mobarak present in this MEDtalk systematic evidence on how the outbreak has adversely affected households across multiple low- and middle-income countries in several major world regions. According to Mushfiq Mobarak a more appropriate framing of the situation in these countries could be in terms of “lives damaged or lost due to disease” and “lives damaged or lost due to economic deprivation”.