# Households’ poverty and inequality after the COVID-19: Insights from panel data of face-to-face surveys in Southeast Asia

## TL;DR

This study examines how the COVID-19 pandemic affected household income, poverty, and inequality in Southeast Asia using data from Thailand and Vietnam.

## Contribution

The paper provides new insights into the micro-level heterogeneous impacts of the pandemic on income and inequality in Southeast Asian households.

## Key findings

- The pandemic had a negative effect on household income and increased poverty and income inequality.
- The impact of the pandemic was most severe on the lowest income households.
- There are significant heterogeneous effects of the pandemic on income distribution.

## Abstract

The global COVID-19 pandemic has had catastrophic impacts on global economies and human health. The consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic include the fatalities of millions of people and increased poverty. Given the limited evidence at the micro level and on the heterogeneous impacts of the COVID-19, we use panel data of 2,517 households from Thailand and Vietnam to investigate the correlation and heterogeneous effects of the COVID-19 on household income and poverty and to examine the distributional effects on household income. The results show that the COVID-19 has a negative correlation with household income, while it has a positive correlation with the Gini coefficient of income inequality and poverty. Our results also show that there are unequal effects of the COVID-19 on household income, inequality, and poverty at the micro level. Further, the COVID-19 has the highest negative impact on daily per capita income of households in the 10th and 25th quantile groups. Policy implications are proposed to support households in disadvantageous groups.