By Eric LeCompte
We can only end the pandemic if we end it everywhere. Yet, across the world, Covid recovery efforts are leaving hundreds of millions of people behind. As policymakers seek the best way out of the crisis, their efforts should incorporate what we now know: It’s more difficult for developing countries to respond to the pandemic.
The Covid-19 crisis hit developing countries harder than wealthy countries and the effects will linger longer. The International Monetary Fund projects that advanced economies will return to their prepandemic growth trends in 2022, while developing countries will see persistent losses continue for several more years.
A new interactive map and database published by my organization, Jubilee USA Network, and our partners, LATINDADD, shows why developing countries face greater pandemic health and economic challenges.
The database, called the Atlas of Vulnerability, identifies pre-existing challenges that 24 developing countries in Latin America and the Caribbean face. These vulnerabilities heightened the impact of the coronavirus crisis. While these developing countries are crushed by the ongoing pandemic, they are left out of solutions decided by world leaders because they are not classified by the World Bank as “low-income.”
The World Bank classifies countries by their population’s average income. No countries are classified as low-income in Latin America or the Caribbean. Not even Haiti, the poorest country in the hemisphere. Yet—all countries are developing and most struggle with poverty rates above 20%.
Data about the challenges that complicated pandemic response in developing countries is just emerging and in many cases is missing.
Our research map allows users for the first time to view and compare top vulnerability factors and compare them with benchmarks from developed economies. The result is an online interface that provides a holistic picture of the social, economic, and environmental factors hindering recovery in Latin America.
Pre-existing vulnerabilities made countries ill-prepared for the pandemic and made the pandemic worse.
Take health, for instance, where countries are paying the price for years of underinvestment. In all but two countries we researched, government health spending per person is less than a quarter of the amount spent in industrialized countries. Most of these countries saw death rates skyrocket during the pandemic.
Schools closed for more than 85% of teaching days in 2020 in half of the countries. The combination of low internet access and school closures potentially permanently set back children’s education.
Their economies are also more vulnerable. Tax revenue in six of the countries is less than half the average tax revenue in developed countries. Dependence on tourism, money from relatives in wealthy countries and exports all fell for countries in the region because of the pandemic. For more than half of the countries, dependence on tourism is higher than the world average.
Poverty has also increased in all Latin American countries since the dawn of the pandemic.
With depleted budgets and spending more on urgent pandemic needs, investment in climate action will suffer as well. Hurricanes Eta and Iota were stark reminders of the unrelenting pace of the climate crisis in a region where 75% of countries show less climate response than the global average.
These “middle-income” developing countries have limited access to concessional financing and have been, for the most part, left out of debt relief initiatives in the response to the Covid crisis so far. In Latin America and the Caribbean, nearly 60% of income from exports pays debt.
The Atlas of Vulnerability research contributes to a more effective, inclusive and resilient global pandemic crisis response. By bringing attention to the broader challenges in all developing countries, at all income levels, we can provide better solutions. The atlas can guide decisionmakers on how to target recovery policies so countries can become more resilient to public health crises and economic shocks.
This all underlines the need for a more effective global pandemic response. We need to pay more attention to the broader challenges that face developing countries. Only then can we ensure that the response of the international community better supports them to overcome the pandemic.
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