Pandemics erode poverty alleviation process: Impact on productive livelihood and poverty return

Pandemics such as COVID-19 threaten income growth by disrupting productive activities for households, especially those who have just escaped from poverty. We provide empirical evidence on how pandemic disproportionately threatens the rural productive livelihood based on 48 months of household production electricity consumption data. The results show that after COVID-19, the productive livelihood activities of 51.11% households who have just overcome poverty have returned to the level before poverty alleviation. Their productive livelihood activities dropped by 21.81% on average during the national COVID-19 epidemic and by 40.57% during the regional epidemic. The households with lower income, lower level of education and less labor force even suffer more. We estimate 3.74% decline in income owing to the decrease in productive activities, resulting in 5.41% of households potentially falling back into poverty. This study provides an important reference for countries being at risk of returning to poverty after pandemic.