Children and COVID-19 Research Library

This report is a call to action, to prepare for future crises, and the ones that we are experiencing today to tackle the multi-faceted social and economic dimensions of crises. It is, above all, a call to focus on people – women, youth, low-wage workers, small and medium enterprises, the informal sector and on vulnerable groups who are already at risk. Rapid assessments during the first months of the pandemic were critical to pinpoint the social, economic and political impacts of the crisis, and discover ways to mitigate them with sustainable, resilient and rights-based solutions forged through both the public and private sector.

This year’s World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends provides a comprehensive assessment of current decent work deficits and how these have been exacerbated by multiple, overlapping crises in recent years. It analyses global patterns, regional differences and outcomes across groups of workers. The report provides labour market projections for 2023 and 2024 and presents trends in labour productivity growth, analysing the factors contributing to its decline.

This paper explores Digital Poverty (DP) in England by adopting the DP Alliance’s theoretical framework that includes both Individual Determinants (individual capability and motivation) and Circumstantial Determinants (conditions of action). Such a framework is interpreted as an expression of Strong Structuration Theory (SST), by situating the connection between social structure and human agency in an intertwined relationship. This study focuses on new potential vulnerabilities that are connected to DP in England by drawing on a survey conducted on a randomised stratified sample (n = 1988) of parents aged between 20–55 with children at school.

This study investigates the prevalence of household food insecurity and child hunger during the COVID-19 pandemic, alongside the relationships between household income and the occurrence of child hunger. Socio-demographic characteristics, including monthly household income, gender, and age of the surveyed child were parent-reported. The validated 10-item Radimer/Cornell Hunger and Food Insecurity Instrument was adopted to assess household food insecurity, parental food insecurity, and child hunger during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The lockdown after the COVID-19 pandemic not only caused public health crises and income stress but also put millions at risk of food insecurity and malnutrition across the globe, especially in low and middle-income countries [LMICs]. This study evaluated the effects of financial stress and household socio-economic deprivation on the nutritional status of 1551 children under the age of five during COVID-19 in Pakistan. A self-administered questionnaire was used between November 2020 and April 2021 to collect information on age, height, children’s weight, and socio-economic status from 1152 rural households from underdeveloped regions in Punjab, Pakistan. With the help of the proportionate simple random sampling method, this study employed a model (binary logistic regression) to calculate the likelihood of malnourishment.

This study used multiple methods (interviews, survey) to assess experiences of stakeholders, sponsors, and center-based early care and education (ECE) program directors pertaining to child nutrition (e.g., provision of nutritious foods, mealtime practices, CACFP administration/use) and the provision of child-care (i.e., day-to-day ECE operations and programming) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants included stakeholders from 22 national and state agencies associated with the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) who also work to promote nutrition and quality child-care, representatives of 17 CACFP sponsor organizations, and 40 center-based ECE program directors who participated in interviews, as well as 100 ECE directors who completed surveys. Data were collected across four states. Thematic analyses of interviews and descriptive methods were used to analyze data collected.

Rapid urbanization in metropolitan areas resulted in a mounting number of slum dwellers such as street children, insufficient basic infrastructures, and services. Hence, the world pledges 'sustainable cities and communities' under the Sustainable Development Goals 2030, which aims to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable for everyone. The objective becomes explicitly vital due to the spread of COVID-19, as over 90 per cent cases are befallen in urban areas. Slum neighborhoods areas are constituted as the most at-risk urban locations which recorded the highest numbers of infectious cases. Hence, this article summarizes SDG 11, focusing on Target 11.1 and Target 11.5 to guarantee access to adequate, safe, affordable housing and essential services for all humans and upgrading slums. Both targets aim to significantly reduce the number of deaths and people affected by direct economic loss due to disasters. The primary purposes of this paper are to explain the challenges faced by the children living in slums in exercising their human rights, particularly during the pandemic epoch and legal analysis on the Convention on the Rights of Child (CRC).

Among the social inequalities that continue to still surpasses the basic rights of several citizens, political and environmental organizations decisively “drag” the “ghost” of hunger between different countries of the world, including Brazil. The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the difficulties encountered in fighting poverty, which has led Brazil to a worrying situation regarding its fragility in the fight against new pandemics. The present study aims to estimate, compare, and report the prevalence of mortality due to child malnutrition among the macro-regions of Brazil and verify possible associations with the outcome of death by COVID-19. This would identify the most fragile macro-regions in the country with the greatest need for care and investments.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated problems of ensuring food security for all strata of the population of many countries of the world, including Russia. For scientific research of these problems, development and implementation of effective practical recommendations in the international scientific community has developed an interdisciplinary the concept of “food security”. Food security is a stable condition processes, mechanisms, infrastructures, relationships and influences related to food production, storage, transportation, supply, consumption and disposal food waste. The concept of food security it is the key to studying the problems of providing for the population food economists, lawyers, specialists management and logistics, marketers, social psychologists, nutritionists, as well as specialists in the field of other sciences. Its place in comprehensive security research food security is also found by the sociology of nutrition, which studies food systems, first of all, in its links such as the consumption of food by various social groups and food waste management. During the third stage of the sociological research, the topic which was the change in the eating behavior of various socio-demographic groups of Russian society in the conditions of ongoing pandemics, the author’s team conducted an analysis of food practices children and adolescents in the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods of conducting smart survey and in-depth interviews were selected for the research.

This study examines how children’s centres in a major city in England responded to food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic by helping to run ‘FOOD Clubs’ to support families. Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews with children’s centre staff, it analyses how clubs were organised, why people joined them, and the range of benefits parents derived from them. It extends the literature on food insecurity which focuses heavily on the rise of foodbanks. These data also informs broader policy debates around supporting parents in poverty, effective early years provision and the challenges facing families experiencing food insecurity.

Child hunger has long-term and short-term consequences, as starving children are at risk of many forms of malnutrition, including wasting, stunting, obesity and micronutrient deficiencies. The purpose of this paper is to show that the child hunger and socio-economic inequality in South Africa increased during her COVID-19 pandemic due to various lockdown regulations that have affected the economic status of the population. This paper uses the National Income Dynamics Study-Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM WAVES 1–5) collected in South Africa during the intense COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 to assess the socioeconomic impacts of child hunger rated inequalities. First, child hunger was determined by a composite index calculated by the authors. Descriptive statistics were then shown for the investigated variables in a multiple logistic regression model to identify significant risk factors of child hunger. Additionally, the decomposable Erreygers' concentration index was used to measure socioeconomic inequalities on child hunger in South Africa during the Covid-19 pandemic.

This poverty assessment evaluates Cambodia’s poverty reduction progress between 2009 and 2019 and contributing factors. Based on the authors understanding of contributing factors, the assessment asks what the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been, and what will be needed to support inclusive recovery. The Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) recently updated the national poverty lines for Cambodia. Prompted by Cambodia’s transition to lower middle-income status in 2015, the RGC revisited the poverty measurement methodology in 2017; the review confirmed that the way Cambodians live and spend today has changed considerably as the country became richer, and that the national poverty lines needed revising to better reflect economic realities. This assessment uses the new poverty lines to evaluate Cambodia between 2009 and 2019, coupled with other data sources. This poverty assessment covers 5 chapters. Chapter 1 examines the progress Cambodia made in reducing poverty and boosting shared prosperity between 2009 and 2019. Chapter 2 examines the evolution of nonmonetary poverty between 2009 and 2019. Chapter 3 examines the profile of poverty and inequality in 2019/20. Chapter 4 examines the 2019 fiscal system and its effects on poverty and inequality in 2019/20. Chapter 5 examines COVID-19 socio-economic effects on Cambodian Households in 2020.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) partly reversed gains made in three decades of sustained decline in poverty and a decade of accelerated reduction in inequality in Philippines. Although the economy is recovering gradually, there are signs that the recovery may be uneven. Income recovery also seems to be slower for the poor. The COVID-19 pandemic may have long-term negative impacts on development of human capital. To manage the pandemic shock, a considerable number of poor households have relied on such adverse coping mechanisms as reducing food consumption, which may aggravate already prevalent child malnutrition and stunting. Policy needs to be directed to support an inclusive recovery and to address enduring medium to long term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Conflict, climate change, the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, and fallout from the Ukraine crisis are interacting to create new and worsen existing hunger hotspots around the world. These overlapping crises are reversing the gains many families have made to escape poverty. While global food prices are now stabilising after reaching record highs, in many countries around the world, they continue to climb. High food prices are exacerbating existing humanitarian crises and putting the lives of millions of the world’s most vulnerable children at risk as policymakers are slow to take necessary large-scale action.

In 2021, WFP Cambodia implemented a cash transfer programme to support households impacted by both the COVID-19 pandemic and large-scale floods. This was done in consultation with the Royal Government of Cambodia and development partners. Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), provided financial support to the implementation of the cash transfer programme and accompanying operational research. The objective of the cash transfer programme was two-fold: (1) to increase the beneficiaries’ ability to fulfil essential needs and to support their recovery in the face of these shocks, and (2) to create an operational model for shock responsive social protection programmes that could be adopted institutionally and rolled out to address future shocks. For the second objective, WFP commissioned Oxford Policy Management (OPM) to conduct operational research to generate and document key learnings regarding the WFP cash transfer programme. The research sought to answer the following research question: “To what extent did the design and implementation of the WFP cash transfer programme align with and support the building blocks for shock responsive social protection in Cambodia, and what recommendations do WFP, the Royal Government of Cambodia, and social protection actors need to take into account when designing and implementing future cash (and other) programmes to further strengthen the shock responsiveness of the social protection system in the country?”