School of Economics and Finance, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Department of Economics and Finance, Florida Gulf Coast University, Fort Myers, Florida, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2022 Jul 1;17(7):e0269848. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0269848. eCollection 2022.
Recent studies have confirmed that the COVID-19 lockdown has caused massive job losses. However, the impact of this loss on food security is not well-understood. Moreover, a paucity of evidence exists regarding social protection grants' countervailing effects against such shocks. This study examined the effects of job loss (labour income loss) on child and household hungers (our two measures food insecurity) during COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa. It also ascertained whether these effect were offset by alternative social grant programs to document the protective role of the latter.
We used South Africa's National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) and the Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (CRAM) data. These data cover a nationally representative sample of 7073 individuals. We employed a probit model to estimate the effect of job loss and receipts of various social grants on child and households' hungers. We also estimated the double-selection logit model to account for the model's uncertainty surrounding the variable selection and treatment-effects estimation using lasso (Telasso) for causal inference of our analysis.
Our analyses showed that households exposed to a labour market shock during the pandemic experienced a significant increase in our measures of food insecurity (child and household hungers). Specifically, we found that compared with households containing employed respondents, households with respondents who lost their jobs due to COVID-19 lockdown were 5.4% more likely to report child hunger and 2.6% more likely to report household hunger in the past seven days A receipt of child support grant reduces the likelihood of reporting child hunger and household hunger by 21.7%and 16.9% respectively among these households. A receipt of old age pension grant reduces the likelihood of reporting household hunger by 24% with no significant effect on child hunger.
The COVID-19 lockdown resulted in unprecedent job losses with significant implications for food insecurity. Job loss due to COVID-19 lockdown significantly increased food insecurity in South Africa. Receipts of social grants effectively offset this adverse effect. The protective effect of the social grant is heterogenous across its alternative programs (child support grant and old age pension grant) and food insecurity, suggesting the differences in the size of transfers and motivations for sending these transfers.
最近的研究证实，COVID-19 封锁导致了大规模的失业。然而，这种失业对粮食安全的影响还没有被很好地理解。此外，关于社会保护津贴对这种冲击的补偿效应的证据很少。本研究考察了 COVID-19 大流行期间失业（劳动力收入损失）对南非儿童和家庭饥饿（我们衡量粮食不安全的两个指标）的影响。它还确定了这些影响是否被替代社会津贴计划所抵消，以记录后者的保护作用。
我们使用了南非的国家收入动态研究（NIDS）和冠状病毒快速移动调查（CRAM）的数据。这些数据涵盖了全国有代表性的 7073 个人样本。我们使用概率模型来估计失业和获得各种社会津贴对儿童和家庭饥饿的影响。我们还使用双重选择逻辑模型来解释模型对变量选择和治疗效果估计的不确定性，并使用套索（Telasso）进行因果推理分析。
我们的分析表明，在疫情期间受到劳动力市场冲击的家庭，我们衡量的粮食不安全程度（儿童和家庭饥饿）显著增加。具体来说，我们发现，与包含就业受访者的家庭相比，由于 COVID-19 封锁而失业的家庭报告过去七天儿童饥饿的可能性高 5.4%，报告家庭饥饿的可能性高 2.6%。获得儿童抚养津贴可分别降低这些家庭报告儿童饥饿和家庭饥饿的可能性 21.7%和 16.9%。获得老年养恤金津贴可降低家庭饥饿的可能性 24%，对儿童饥饿没有显著影响。
COVID-19 封锁导致了前所未有的失业，对粮食安全产生了重大影响。COVID-19 封锁导致的失业显著增加了南非的粮食不安全。社会津贴的发放有效地抵消了这种不利影响。社会津贴的保护作用在其替代方案（儿童抚养津贴和老年养恤金津贴）和粮食不安全方面存在差异，这表明了转移的规模和发送这些转移的动机的差异。
