Assessment of Work Loss Due to COVID-19 Lockdown and its Economic Consequences on Families in Urban Kakinada—A Cross-sectional Study

Abstract

In India due to the COVID-19 lockdown 122 million people lost their jobs in April. It caused many effects like increased starvation, job loss, poverty, alcoholism and gender violence. This study was undertaken to assess the work loss due to the COVID-19 lockdown and its economic consequences on families in urban Kakinada. A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted during 15 April–15 May in 40th urban ward of Kakinada. The sample size was calculated by taking 10% of the ward population. By the systematic random sampling method, 300 samples were collected. Institutional Ethics Committee approval was obtained before data collection. Data were collected by semi-structured questionnaire and entered in MS Excel 2010 and it was analysed using SPSS 21. Descriptive statistics p value of <.05 was taken as statistically significant. The prevalence of work loss was found to be 42%. Work loss has significantly caused a decrease in the purchase of protective foods like vegetables (10.3%), fruits (22.4%), milk (16.1%), non-veg (36.2%) and groceries (35.1%). About 44.6% have chronic diseases and 34.7% among work loss borrowed money for medical expenditure. It affected the health of families in terms of decreased purchase of protective foods resulting in food insecurity, and increased burden on medical expenditure due to chronic diseases. JEL Code: D1