Documentos de Trabajo Universidad Externado de Colombia-No 67/2021
Abstract
This paper quantifies the effects that the COVID-19 lockdown measures had on the distribution of income across households in Colombia, highlighting the potential effect of the emergency policies introduced by the authorities. We simulate the occupational effects of the lockdown decree and use the tax-benefit mi-crosimulation model for Colombia -COLMOD- to simulate the emergency policies for the first complete month of lockdown: April 2020. We found that the 6.2 million of jobs destroyed translate into an average reduction of 16.5% of household disposable income with important income losses at the bottom of the distribution. The new policies introduced increased disposable income by 0.8 billion pesos and offset the income loss of those in poverty. However, the recovering effect of the new policies for those out of poverty but vulnerable is more modest, this group could get on average only 84% of their previous income.
