COVID-19 and the Informal Economy

Martha (Marty) Chen is a Lecturer in Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and Co-Founder, International Coordinator Emeritus and board member of the global network Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO). An experienced development practitioner and scholar, her areas of specialization are employment, gender, and poverty with a focus on the informal economy. Before joining Harvard in 1987, she had two decades of resident experience working in Bangladesh (with the NGO BRAC) and in India (as field representative of Oxfam America). Currently, she is chair of the boards of BRAC Global and the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU WIDER).Michael Rogan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics and Economic History as well as the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), both at Rhodes University in South Africa. Since 2011, he has been a research associate in the global research-policy-action network Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO). He has published widely on topics such as informal employment, gender, poverty, food security, education, and skills development. His focus is largely on developing and middle-income countries where he has worked with various government departments, non-profit organisations, and national statistics offices.Kunal Sen is Director of UNU-WIDER, Helsinki, Finland, and Professor of Development Economics, Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, UK (on leave). He has over three decades of experience in academic and applied development economics research. He has performed extensive research on the political economy of growth and development, international finance, the dynamics of poverty, social exclusion, female labour force participation, and the informal sector in developing economies. His research has focused on India, East Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. He was awarded the Sanjaya Lall Prize in 2006 and the Dudley Seers Prize in 2003 for his publications.

• 1: Martha Alter Chen, Erofili Grapsa, Ghida Ismail, Sarah Orleans Reed, Michael Rogan, and Marcela Valdivia: COVID-19 and informal work: Degrees and pathways of impact in eleven cities around the world2: Martha Alter Chen and Joann Vanek: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on employment: Findings from national labour surveys in five Latin American countries3: Michael Danquah, Robert Osei, Simone Schotte, and Kunal Sen: The impact of COVID-19 on employment and earnings in Ghana4: Michael Rogan and Caroline Skinner: South Africa's informal economy and COVID-19: Differentiated impacts and an uneven recovery5: Simone Schotte and Rocco Zizzamia: The impact of COVID-19 on urban vulnerable livelihoods: Accounts from residents of Cape Town's largest township6: Hossain Zillur Rahman, Atiya Rahman, Md Saiful Islam, Avinno Faruk, Imran Matin, Mohammad Abdul Wazed, and Umama Zillur: Recovery with distress: Unpacking COVID-19 impact on livelihoods and poverty in rural areas and urban low-income settlements of Bangladesh7: Deepita Chakravarty and Nandini Nayak: The COVID-19 pandemic and intra-household bargaining: A case of domestic workers in Delhi8: Michael Danquah, Amina Ebrahim and Maureen Were: The uneven path to recovery: The sub-Saharan African experience9: Siviwe Mhlana, Rachel Moussié, Sally Roever and Michael Rogan: Informal employment and an inclusive recovery: What is missing from national economic recovery plans?,10: Laura Alfers and Florian Juergens-Grant: Social protection, the COVID-19 crisis and the informal economy: Lessons from relief for comprehensive social protection11: Martha Alter Chen, Sophie Plagerson and Laura Alfers: A new social contract inclusive of informal workers12: Ravi Kanbur, Jayati Ghosh, Barbara Harriss-White, and Jan Breman: Reflections on informal employment, COVID-19 and the future