Understanding Economic Outcomes and Resilience to COVID-19: Evidence from the Kenya Life Panel Survey

COVID-19 is causing major health and economic challenges for low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The Kenya Life Panel Survey (KLPS) is uniquely situated to address numerous key questions about the effects of the pandemic. The KLPS is a 20-year longitudinal survey on health, educational, nutritional, demographic, social, and labor market outcomes among a sample of thousands of Kenyans who were participants in one or more randomized health, skills training, and financial capital interventions during childhood and adolescence, and collects intergenerational data on their children. Researchers are adding a phone survey round to KLPS to track COVID-19 exposure, knowledge and coping mechanisms (including migration); measure downstream long-term effects of adolescent interventions on responses; and determine how crisis experiences affect subsequent outcomes for adults and children. Researchers are estimating effects using the original experiments, and spatial and temporal variation in survey timing and COVID-19 intensity and policies across Kenya.