Effects of COVID-19 Pandemic on Food Chain and Poverty in Pakistan

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic has severely affected the food supply throughout the world. Pandemics affect the economy of nations badly but a number of countries were facing food insecurity even before COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper yearly data of food security is collected from the year 2015 to 2020 to inspect the consequences of poverty and COVID-19 pandemic through spatial regression analysis. The analysis shows that the food insecurity index has increased up to 33.5% by the year 2020 due to prevailing COVID- 19 pandemic. The Asian residents which are already living in developing countries have faced higher food insecurity between the years 2015 and 2018. The spatial regression analysis babbled that the discriminations like race, religion and creed doesn’t play any significant role in poverty and food insecurity. The primary factor of food insecurity is poverty. The poverty affected strongly during the years 2015 and 2018, the condition was worsened by the arrival of COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.