Comparing Approaches to Project COVID-19 Effects on Poverty

Different studies use different approaches to forecast how many people will fall into poverty due to the outbreak of Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19), with largely different results. Even when using the same growth forecasts and poverty lines, poverty projections differ largely by approaches: one projects poverty to increase by around 400 million individuals, while another estimates as few as 49 million individuals will fall into poverty. This note compares approaches and how their specific methodological details lead to different estimates of poverty effects from the COVID-19 pandemic.