POVERTY ANDINEQUALITY DURING THE PANDEMIC : The diverging experiences of Kenya and Senegal

The governments of Kenya and Senegal reacted quickly to contain the spread of the Covid-19 virus. They applied different lockdown policies, however, and different social relief measures to assist vulnerable households in withstanding the health crisis. Kenya clamped down harder on economic activities than did Senegal, whereas Senegal provided a more generous state aid package to poor households than Kenya. The report discusses the impact of these different policy approaches on poverty and inequality in the two countries’ informal economies. POVERTY AND INEQUALITY DURING THE PANDEMIC The diverging experiences of Kenya and Senegal • Our data show significant discrepancies with regard to poverty and inequality. In Kenya, poverty in the informal labour force increased substantially between October 2018 and December 2020, whereas in Senegal, poverty and inequality declined between June 2019 and April 2022. Kenya’s experience may be considered a »normal response« to an economic recession but the improvement in Senegal’s social indicators makes that country stand out from the general trend of declining income during the pandemic. We cannot exclude other factors, but conclude that the sheer magnitude of the social relief package in Senegal was instrumental in improving poverty and inequality indicators. • The data are taken from country-wide representative empirical studies conducted as part of the FES-IDOS-ILO project on »Informal Employment, Social Security and Political Trust in Sub-Saharan Africa«. The project ran from 2018 to 2022 and includes opinion surveys of views on access to health services, and on political trust and reasons for joining groups, including levels of interest in trade union membership. The general report on the project was recently published under the title A Majority Working in the Shadows. More studies on income, poverty and inequality are being prepared and will soon be published.