Documents Sterck, Olivier 3 results

"This paper evaluates the global welfare consequences of increases in mortality and poverty generated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Increases in mortality are measured in terms of the number of years of life lost (LY) to the pandemic. Additional years spent in poverty (PY) are conservatively estimated using growth estimates for 2020 and two dif-ferent scenarios for its distributional characteristics. Using years of life as a welfare metric yields a single parameter that captures the underlying trade-off between lives and livelihoods: how many PYs have the same welfare cost as one LY. Taking an agnostic view of this parameter, estimates of LYs and PYs are compared across countries for different scenarios. Three main findings arise. First, as of early June 2020, the pandemic (and the observed private and policy responses) has generated at least 68 million additional poverty years and 4.3 million years of life lost across 150 countries. The ratio of PYs to LYs is very large in most coun-tries, suggesting that the poverty consequences of the crisis are of paramount importance. Second, this ratio declines systematically with GDP per capita: poverty accounts for a much greater share of the welfare costs in poorer countries. Finally, the dominance of poverty over mortality is reversed in a counterfactual “herd immunity” scenario: without any policy intervention, LYs tend to be greater than PYs, and the overall welfare losses are greater."

"The Covid-19 pandemic has brought about massive declines in wellbeing around the world. This paper seeks to quantify and compare two important components of those losses – increased mortality and higher poverty – using years of human life as a common metric. We estimate that almost 20 million life-years were lost to Covid-19 by December 2020. Over the same period and by the most conservative definition, over 120 million additional years were spent in poverty because of the pandemic. The mortality burden, whether estimated in lives or in years of life lost, increases sharply with GDP per capita. The poverty burden, on the contrary, declines with per capita national incomes when a constant absolute poverty line is used, or is uncorrelated with national incomes when a more relative approach is taken to poverty lines. In both cases the poverty burden of the pandemic, relative to the mortality burden, is much higher for poor countries. The distribution of aggregate welfare losses – combining mortality and poverty and expressed in terms of life-years – depends both on the choice of poverty line(s) and on the relative weights placed on mortality and poverty. With a constant absolute poverty line and a relatively low welfare weight on mortality, poorer countries are found to bear a greater welfare loss from the pandemic. When poverty lines are set differently for poor, middle and high-income countries and/or a greater welfare weight is placed on mortality, upper-middle and rich countries suffer the most."

"This article explains the conditions under which countries allow refugees the right to work in accordance with Articles 17–19 of the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees. It explores variation in both the de jure and de facto rights to work through a mixed-methods approach. Qualitatively, it builds upon research in the East African region, in which there is significant variation in state practice relating to refugees' socio-economic rights. Quantitatively, it draws upon an original dataset to examine the policies of low- and middle-income countries that host more than 1,000 refugees. Coding for the right to work was supplied by and triangulated across three different refugee organizations with relevant expertise. We argue that the de jure and de facto rights to work are shaped by distinctive actors and mechanisms. De jure rights are determined by pay-offs at the ‘national' level; de facto rights by pay-offs at the ‘local' level. While being a signatory of international norms is the most important variable for de jure commitment, the degree of decentralization is the most important variable underlying de facto rights. These findings suggest that promoting refugee norm compliance relies upon creating incentives at both national and local levels."