Poverty and Covid-19 in Cambodia: Lessons and Future Preparedness
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Abstract/Summary
The Covid-19 global health crisis has caused ongoing economic concerns. It exacerbated pre-existing issues and diminished Cambodia’s poverty reduction efforts with evidence of both impoverishment and destitution. In multiple ways, poverty and the pandemic put more strain on people’s livelihoods and on the relationships between agriculture, migration, debt, education and other tightly interwoven sectors.
This policy brief aims to provide a synthesis of selected key research findings and emerging themes from two studies under the Poverty Monitoring Initiative Project (PMI): 1) Cambodia Poverty Dynamics and Covid-19 (Bird et al. 2022), and 2) Poverty and Well-Being Before and During Covid-19 in Cambodia: An Assessment of Trends and Correlates (Diwakar, Roth, and Kamninga 2022), while also drawing on the Cambodia Poverty Assessment: Toward A More Inclusive and Resilient Cambodia (World Bank 2022). In addition, feedback and policy discussions from the March 2023 consultation workshop, ‘Poverty and Covid-19: Lessons and Future Preparedness,’ informed this brief. Invited key speakers and participants, representing the national and subnational government, selected international organisations and civil society organisations, shared research evidence and practical experiences from their respective fields of work. A key theme of the workshop focused on future preparedness for the next crisis.