Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, over $1 trillion in cash payments have gone to more than 1.5 billion people, more than one-fifth of the global population.
Governments trying to provide assistance to their citizens, many of whom lost their livelihoods due to lockdowns and other measures to stop the spread of the virus, have faced difficult decisions, including “who should be eligible for the limited resources that exist,” said Joshua Blumenstock, associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley and faculty co-director of the Center for Effective Global Action, or CEGA, an international development research hub that tests poverty reduction efforts.
Those decisions require data. And when policymakers have limited, outdated, or unreliable data, they have a hard time determining who should get aid, let alone what type of support to provide, when to offer it, and how to reach recipients.