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	Futures of 370 million children in jeopardy as school closures deprive them of school meals by UNICEF, World Food Programme, agencies   Apr. 2020   As the COVID-19 crisis pushes up levels of hunger among the global poor, the World Food Programme and UNICEF are urging national governments to prevent devastating nutrition and health consequences for the 370 million children missing out on school meals amid school closures.   'For millions of children around the world, the meal they get at school is the only meal they get in a day. Without it, they go hungry, they risk falling sick, dropping out of school and losing their best chance of escaping poverty. We must act now to prevent the health pandemic from becoming a hunger catastrophe', said WFP Executive Director David Beasley.   School meals are especially critical for girls. In many poor countries, the promise of a meal can be enough to make struggling parents send their daughter to school, allowing her to escape heavy domestic duties or early marriage.   'School is so much more than a place of learning. For many children it is a lifeline to safety, health services and nutrition. Unless we act now, by scaling up lifesaving services for the most vulnerable children the devastating fallout caused by COVID-19 will be felt for decades to come', said Henrietta Fore, UNICEF Executive Director.   Alongside school meal programmes, children in poor countries often benefit from health and nutrition services - such as vaccinations, deworming and iron supplementation - delivered through their schools.   In response to a recent report from the United Nations Secretary-General, which highlighted the number of children missing out on school meals, WFP and UNICEF are working with governments to support children who are out of school during the crisis. In 68 countries, governments and WFP are providing children with take-home rations, vouchers or cash transfers as an alternative to school meals.   Under the partnership, WFP and UNICEF will assist governments in the coming months to ensure that when schools reopen returning children benefit from school meals and health and nutrition programmes. This will also provide an incentive for parents to send their children back to school. The agencies are also working together to track children in need of school meals through an online School Meals map.   To support this work which will initially focus on 30 low-income or fragile countries to support 10 million children UNICEF and WFP are appealing for US$ 600 million. Their work will be closely aligned with the UNESCO-led Global Education Coalition, a global push to ensure children keep learning despite the disruptions caused by COVID-19.   http://www.wfp.org/news/futures-370-million-children-jeopardy-school-closures-deprive-them-school-meals-unicef-and-wfp http://cdn.wfp.org/2020/school-feeding-map/ http://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse http://www.educationcannotwait.org/news/ http://www.unicef.org/coronavirus/covid-19-double-emergency http://bit.ly/3aNYitT http://data.unicef.org/resources/data-to-inform-the-covid-19-response/ http://data.unicef.org/resources/rapid-situation-tracking-covid-19-socioeconomic-impacts-data-viz/ Visit the related web page
	Half a billion more people could be pushed into poverty by coronavirus by United Nations University, Oxfam, agencies   June 2020   Precarity and the pandemic. The end of poverty postponed, report by Andy Sumner, Eduardo Ortiz-Juarez, Chris Hoy for the United Nations University: UNU-WIDER.   Over a billion people living in poverty and a $500 million per day loss of income for the poorest people in the world could soon be reality.   The COVID-19 pandemic continues to dominate headlines as the death toll rises and economies falter. However, far too little attention is being given to the worsening crisis in developing countries where coronavirus is spreading rapidly and governments grapple with the devastating economic consequences of prolonged shutdowns and the collapse of world trade. Three-quarters of new cases detected every day are in developing countries.   All of this is likely to trigger immediate and — potentially — permanent increases in global poverty, and the situation could get a lot worse unless governments move faster.   In fact, it could set back progress on reducing global poverty and achieving SDG 1 by decades — as the The Economist called it, the poverty impact of COVID-19 is likely to become the ‘the great reversal’.   In a new UNU-WIDER paper we take a closer look at those poverty impacts building on our earlier estimates that many millions of people could fall into poverty due to the crisis.   How COVID-19 is reversing poverty reduction and revealing the precarity of progress in the last decades   Goal 1 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals aims to end extreme poverty by 2030. The attainment of that goal is looking increasingly challenging due to COVID-19 and the likely increase in the number of people living in poverty as well as the impact of COVID-19 on the existing world’s poor.   Our new poverty estimates confirm our earlier estimates — the COVID-19 crisis could lead to 80-400m new poor living under $1.90 per day and potentially take extreme poverty back over 1 billion people. These numbers represent a reversal of 20–30 years in global poverty reduction (depending on whether one takes absolute or relative counts).   Our research considered a range of impacts based on income or consumption contractions of 5%, 10%, and 20% and found that in addition to the impact on extreme poverty there could be over 500m new poor living under the $3.20 and $5.50 per day poverty lines.   The cost of COVID-19 on the poorest   In addition to increases in the poverty headcount, we find that the intensity and severity of poverty are also likely to be exacerbated too.   The daily losses could be in the millions of dollars per day ($2011PPP) among those already living in extreme poverty, and among the group of people newly pushed into extreme poverty as a result of the crisis.   In our new paper we also find that the location of global poverty could shift too as a consequence of the crisis.   There could be much more new poverty not only in countries where poverty has remained relatively high over the last three decades but also in countries that are not among the poorest countries anymore. Our country-level poverty estimates that show the location of global poverty is likely to shift towards middle-income countries and South Asia and East Asia.   Extreme poverty could almost double in today’s middle-income countries increasing to 680 million people under the worst-case scenario. While immediately prior to the outbreak of the virus sub-Sahara Africa was home to 60% of the world’s poor; our estimates illustrate a resurgence of poverty elsewhere in the world, in South Asia and in East Asia. In countries such as Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and the Philippines.   The lesson for progress   These findings expose the extent of precarity in developing countries, but also the fragility of poverty reductions to any economic shock whether it is the current crisis or the next wave of the pandemic.   The results raise questions for how we think about poverty reduction and in particular, the need for new measures of extreme precarity to sit alongside measures of extreme poverty. And the two measures need to be reported together. The extreme poverty measure ($1.90) gave a poverty count of about 700m or 9.9% the world’s population before the crisis. Just above those people sit another 400m people or 5.4% of the world’s population living in extreme precarity, one shock away from poverty whether it is this crisis or the next wave of COVID-19.   http://www.wider.unu.edu/publication/end-poverty-postponed   Precarity and the pandemic: COVID-19 and poverty incidence, intensity, and severity in developing countries   This paper makes a set of estimates for the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on poverty incidence, intensity, and severity in developing countries and on the distribution of global poverty. We conclude there could be increases in poverty of a substantial magnitude—up to 400 million new poor living under the $1.90 poverty line, over 500 million new poor living under the poverty lines of $3.20 and $5.50.   Further, the global income shortfall below each poverty line could expand by up to 60 per cent; the daily income losses could amount to $350m among those living under $1.90 per day and almost $200 million among the group of people newly pushed into extreme poverty. Finally, we present country-level poverty estimates that show the location of global poverty is likely to shift towards middle-income countries and South Asia and East Asia.   Our estimates are indication of the range of potential outcomes. If anything, our estimates show the extent of precarity in developing countries and the fragility of much poverty reduction to any economic shock.   http://www.wider.unu.edu/publication/precarity-and-pandemic http://www.wider.unu.edu/publication/estimates-impact-covid-19-global-poverty http://www.wider.unu.edu/news/press-release-covid-19-fallout-could-push-half-billion-people-poverty-developing-countries   Apr. 2020   Half a billion people could be pushed into poverty by coronavirus. (Oxfam International)   The economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic could push half a billion more people into poverty unless urgent action is taken to bail out developing countries, said Oxfam today. The agency is calling on world leaders to agree an 'Economic Rescue Package for All' to keep poor countries and poor communities afloat, ahead of meetings of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and G20.   Oxfam's new report 'Dignity Not Destitution' presents fresh analysis which suggests between six and eight percent of the global population could be forced into poverty as governments shut down entire economies to manage the spread of the virus.   This could set back the fight against poverty by a decade, and as much as 30 years in some regions such as sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa. Over half the global population could be living in poverty in the aftermath of the pandemic.   The analysis, published today by the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research, was conducted by researchers at King's College London and the Australian National University.   An 'Emergency Rescue Package for All' would enable poor countries to provide cash grants to those who have lost their income and to bail out vulnerable small businesses. It would be paid for through a variety of measures including: The immediate cancellation of US$1 trillion worth of developing country debt payments in 2020. Cancelling Ghana's external debt payments in 2020 would enable the government to give a cash grant of $20 dollars a month to each of the country's 16 million children, disabled and elderly people for a period of six months.   The creation of at least US$1 trillion in new international reserves, known as Special Drawing Rights, to dramatically increase the funds available to countries.   Jose Maria Vera, Oxfam International Interim Executive Director said:   'The devastating economic fallout of the pandemic is being felt across the globe. But for poor people in poor countries who are already struggling to survive there are almost no safety nets to stop them falling into poverty.   G20 Finance Ministers, the IMF and World Bank must give developing countries an immediate cash injection to help them bail out poor and vulnerable communities.   They must cancel all developing country debt payments for 2020 and encourage other creditors to do the same, and issue at least US$1 trillion of Special Drawing Rights'.   Existing inequalities dictate the economic impact of this crisis. The poorest workers in rich and poor nations are less likely to be in formal employment, enjoy labour protections such as sick pay, or be able to work from home.   Globally, just one out of every five unemployed people have access to unemployment benefits.   Two billion people work in the informal sector with no access to sick pay - the majority in poor countries where 90 percent of jobs are informal compared to just 18 percent in rich nations.   Women are on the front line of the coronavirus response and are likely to be hardest hit financially. Women make up 70 percent of health workers globally and provide 75 percent of unpaid care, looking after children, the sick and the elderly.   Women are also more likely to be employed in poorly paid precarious jobs that are most at risk.   More than one million Bangladeshi garment workers - 80 percent of whom are women - have already been laid off or sent home without pay after orders from western clothing brands were cancelled or suspended.   Many wealthy nations have introduced multi-billion-dollar economic stimulus packages to support business and workers, but most developing nations lack the financial firepower to follow suit.   The UN estimates that nearly half of all jobs in Africa could be lost. Micah Olywangu, a taxi driver and father of three from Nairobi, Kenya, who has not had a fare since the lockdown closed the airport, bars and restaurants, told Oxfam that 'this virus will starve us before it makes us sick'.   Delivering the $2.5 trillion the UN estimates is needed to support developing countries through the pandemic would also require an additional $500 billion in overseas aid.   This includes $160 billion which Oxfam estimates is needed to boost poor countries public health systems and $2 billion for the UN humanitarian fund. Emergency solidarity taxes, such as a tax on extraordinary profits or the very wealthiest individuals, could mobilise additional resources.   'Governments must learn the lessons of the 2008 financial crisis where bailouts for banks and corporations were paid for by ordinary people as jobs were lost, wages flatlined and essential services such as healthcare cut to the bone. Economic stimulus packages must support ordinary workers and small businesses, and bail outs for big corporations must be conditional on action to build fairer, more sustainable economies', added Vera.   # In 2018 there were 3.4 billion people living on less than $5.5 per day according to the World Bank. Researchers used mathematical models to predict how many more people would fall below World Bank poverty lines of $1.90, $3.30 and $5.50 a day based on a 5, 10 and 20 percent drop in GDP. A 20 percent drop in GDP would mean an estimated 434.4 million more people living on less than on $1.90 a day, 611.8 million more people living on less than $3.30 a day and 547.6 million more people on less than $5.50 a day. This represents rise between 6 percent and 8 percent on current levels.   Oxfam is working to raise more funds to scale up its cash transfer programming and food assistance in vulnerable communities across the globe, to allow the most vulnerable households to buy food and basic necessities.   http://www.oxfam.org/en/research/dignity-not-destitution   * Dignity Not Destitution: An Economic Rescue Package for All: http://bit.ly/2JNDUhF Visit the related web page
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