Monitoring COVID-19 Impact on Households in Zimbabwe

The COVID-19 pandemic created an urgent need for timely information to help monitor and mitigate the socio-economic impacts of the crisis. This information is essential to inform policy measures for protecting the welfare of Zimbabweans. Responding to this need, the Zimbabwe Statistics Agency (ZIMSTAT), together with the World Bank and UNICEF, designed a high-frequency telephone survey of households to measure the socio-economic impacts of COVID-19 in Zimbabwe.

The high frequency telephone survey is based on the Poverty, Income, Consumption and Expenditure Surveys (PICES) of 2017 and 2019. The surveys used a sample of 1 747 households in the first round, 1 639 households in round 2 and 1 235 households in round 3, from all ten provinces of Zimbabwe. The sample is representative of urban as well as rural areas. This survey is referred to as the Rapid PICES Monitoring Telephone Survey, and is jointly funded by the Zimbabwe Reconstruction Fund (ZIMREF) and UNICEF, and implemented by ZIMSTAT with technical support from the World Bank and UNICEF.

This brief report summarizes the results of the third round of Rapid PICES, conducted from 15 December to 10 March 2021, and compares them to the findings of the first round conducted from 6 to 24 July 2021 and second round conducted from 24 August to 23 September of 2020, respectively. Computer- Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) was used for data collection. An overview of the findings of the key indicators for the three rounds is provided at the end of this note.

Read the full report here (1MB PDF)

Source: UNICEF, World Bank