HOI WAI JACKIE CHENG
Development economist at the UN, core team member of UN flagship reports, currently based in New York, and previously based in Beijing, Oxford and Hong Kong.
cheng3[at]un[dot]org
SOCIOECONOMIC IMPACTS OF CRISES
A selected set of work on assessing the socioeconomic impacts of crises (including the COVID-19 pandemic) that I was involved in.
October 17, 2024
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World Social Report 2024 - Social Development in Times of Converging Crises: A call for Global Action
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(Core writing team member)
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UN DESA World Social Report series
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Multiple converging crises, including climate change, growing conflicts and rising health pandemics are undermining efforts to eradicate poverty and reduce inequalities around the world. They are hitting the most vulnerable people and societies the hardest. The already disappointing progress on social development is at risk of being held back further by the fiscal burden of responding to crises.
Confluent crises – the COVID-19 pandemic, geopolitical conflicts, and escalating climate change impacts – serves as a critical wake-up call for global action. The World Social Report 2024 calls for global cooperation to promote a human rights-based approach to social protection, ensuring continuity during times of crisis and well-regulated insurance markets with expanded coverage tailored to meet the diverse needs of vulnerable populations. Placing people at the center of development, it underlines the importance of accelerating climate change mitigation, ensuring global financial stability, and preventing pandemics and spillovers of violent conflicts.
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[pdf]
July 12, 2022
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Ensuring SDG progress amid recurrent crises
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(Coauthored with Marcelo LaFleur, Kristinn Sv. Helgason, Sergio Vieira, Alex Julca and Nicole Hunt)
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UN DESA policy brief
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This policy brief assesses the impact of the overlapping crises on poverty, hunger, inequality and other development indicators. Among other things, the brief highlights the unequalizing effects of the crises as they hurt the vulnerable countries and communities the most. Many of the least developed countries are net importers of food and energy and are denied sufficient access to COVID vaccines and treatment. Disadvantaged population groups are not only more exposed to immediate risks from the crises but also less prepared to cope with their effects.
We highlight that poorer households are more affected by rising food and energy prices, given (1) these essentials make up a larger share of their consumption basket; (2) they have less access to financing options to absorb such price hikes; and (3) they rely more on wages, transfers and pensions that typcially lag behind inflation.
The brief also reports some in-house inequality projections:
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Between-country income inequality remained relatively steady since 2015, but rose sharply due to the uneven effect of COVID-19. Our DESA projection suggests that between-country income inequality will not return to the pre-pandemic level, which was already high, until well into the second half of this decade.
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We estimated that about 910 million people live in countries where income inequality could increase by more than 20 per cent due to a COVID-related inflationary shock, with developing countries accounting for 70 per cent of this number.
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[pdf]
September 20, 2021
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Reduce inequality within and across country
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(Lead author)
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Chapter V of UN DESA Sustainable Development Outlook 2021: From Anguish to Determination
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Selected key messages:
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Even in an optimistic scenario, by April 2022, the rest of the world is still going to see its percentage of fully vaccinated people about 20 percentage points lower than that in high-income countries. This would likely lead to uneven recovery across countries.
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The cumulative increase in inequality within a country, as measured by the popular Gini coefficient, could be three times worse in a scenario where the pandemic does not end until 2022, as compared to a reference scenario in which the pandemic had ended in 2020. This assumes policy responses remain similar to those followed in past epidemics/pandemics.
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Disadvantaged groups (women, ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, etc) are more exposed to immediate risks generated by the pandemic and are less protected by the policy measures aimed at coping with it. COVID-19 also accelerates structural changes - e.g. digitalization of economy, which coincides with rising market power concentration - that could put these groups in an even more disadvantaged position after the pandemic is over.
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November 25, 2020
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Variations in COVID strategies: Determinants and lessons
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(Coauthored with S. Nazrul Islam, Kristinn Sv. Helgason, Nicole Hunt, Hiroshi Kawamura, and Marcelo LaFleur, with inputs from Kenneth Iversen and Alex Julca)
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UN DESA working paper
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This paper examines the experience of a set of countries that performed relatively well in coping with the COVID-19 crisis. The goal is to garner insights and lessons that can help countries that may experience initial or second-round outbreaks of the pandemic in the future. The paper finds healthcare, social protection, and overall governance systems as the three main determinants of COVID-19 strategies and their success. Though unique country-specific factors played an important role in confronting the pandemic in some countries, their role was generally mediated through one or the other of the above three main determinants. The findings of the paper suggest that establishing universal healthcare and social protection systems and improvement of governance need to be taken up as an immediate task – and not as a distant goal – even by developing countries. In view of the possibility of recurrence of epidemics in the future, this task has become important.
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July 30, 2020
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UN Secretary-General Policy Brief: The Impact of COVID-19 on South-East Asia
(Contributor to the brief as UN DESA focal point)
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The policy brief examines the impact to date of COVID-19 on the eleven countries of South-East Asia:
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Governments have acted swiftly to battle the pandemic and avoid its worst effects. Regional cooperation has been robust across multiple sectors.
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South-East Asia has reported significantly lower confirmed COVID-19 cases and related deaths, on a per-capita basis, than most other global regions.
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The health, economic and political impact of COVID-19 has hit the most vulnerable the hardest.
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The pandemic has highlighted deep inequalities, shortfalls in governance and the imperative for a sustainable development pathway.
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Four areas are critical for a recovery that leads to a more sustainable, resilient and inclusive future:
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Tackling inequality. Nobody is safe until everybody is safe. Short- and long-term measures must meet the needs of vulnerable groups: including people in the informal economy, women and girls, persons with disabilities, migrants and refugees.
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Bridging the digital divide. People and communities must not be left behind as services and support are increasingly based on digital awareness, literacy and access.
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Greening the economy. South-East Asian nations could embed long-term sustainability and inclusivity in their COVID-19 response and recovery packages, including scaling up investments in decarbonizing economies.
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Upholding human rights and good governance practices. Building back better includes respecting and fulfilling fundamental human rights and protecting civic space.
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All governments in the subregion have supported the Secretary-General’s appeal for a global ceasefire. It is important to translate that commitment into meaningful change by ensuring COVID-19 responses address conflict situations.
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The UN is strongly committed to the region and is supporting governments at the country level. We are providing essential medical supplies; offering technical and financial support for social protection programmes; assessing the socio-economic impacts of the virus and developing mitigation strategies; supporting refugees and returning migrants; helping governments carry out COVID-19 risk communication; and helping address the surge in violence against women and children during the pandemic.
July 13, 2020
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Sustainable Development Outlook 2020 - Achieving SDGs in the wake of COVID-19: Scenarios for policymakers
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(Writing team member)
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COVID-19 has been a tragedy, killing more than half a million people and bringing life and the economy to a standstill in many parts of the world. Economic growth has slowed down and poverty is on the rise. Questions, therefore, have arisen whether these setbacks will jeopar- dize progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Sustainable Development Outlook 2020 offers three main messages: First, the setbacks caused by COVID-19 need not be permanent, and it is possible to regain the momentum and move ahead towards the SDGs. Second, it is even possible to convert the COVID-19 crisis into an opportunity for recovering better, by directing much of the resources earmarked for recovery toward investment in promoting the SDGs. Third, while the impact of COVID-19 for many prosperity-related SDGs was negative, its impact for many planet-related SDGs has been positive: greenhouse gas emissions declined; air and water quality improved; and a process of nature’s regeneration was witnessed in many areas. These opposite impacts of COVID-19 revealed vividly that the current ways of achieving prosperity are in conflict with the health of the planet. The COVID-19 pandemic has created the opportunity for recognizing this conflict in a more profound way and for working more energetically during the Decade of Action to reach the SDGs by 2030.
May 13, 2020
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UN DESA World Economic Situation and Prospects as of mid-2020
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(Writing team member)
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Against the backdrop of a raging and devastating pandemic, the world economy is projected to shrink by 3.2 per cent in 2020. Under the baseline scenario, GDP growth in developed countries will plunge to –5.0 per cent in 2020, while output of developing countries will shrink by 0.7 per cent. The projected cumulative output losses during 2020 and 2021—nearly $8.5 trillion—will wipe out nearly all output gains of the previous four years. The pandemic has unleashed a health and economic crisis unprecedented in scope and magnitude. Lockdowns and the closing of national borders enforced by governments have paralyzed economic activities across the board, laying off millions of workers worldwide. Governments across the world are rolling out fiscal stimulus measures—equivalent overall to roughly 10 per cent of the world GDP —to fight the pandemic and minimize the impact of a catastrophic economic downturn.
April 1, 2020
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UN DESA April 2020 Monthly Briefing on the World Economic Situation and Prospects - COVID-19: Disrupting lives, economies and societies
(Writing team member)
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This piece presents the initial assessment of UN DESA on COVID-19's effects on growth and other development dimensions.
It stresses that the pandemic will have differentiated employment and income effects, even in most developed economies. Evidence suggests that those at the lower end of the income distribution will suffer the most. Lower-income workers tend to enjoy less labour market protection —a considerable share of them work in informal sectors where protection is minimal; and even for those in the formal sectors, many are paid by the hour, with typically little or no paid sick leave.
Furthermore, a high share of lower-income workers is employed in industries that are most affected by the pandemic, such as retail sales and food service industries, which require close physical proximity to others. In the case of the United States, over a quarter of jobs require workers to work at arm’s length of others, and a vast majority of them are lower-wage jobs. The unfortunate combination of subpar labour market protection and close physical proximity to others means lower-wage workers are disproportionately harmed by the pandemic, in terms of both economic and health outcomes. The vicious cycle between low socioeconomic status and high health risk could exacerbate the high levels of income inequality in many countries.
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