Impact of COVID 19 on the Income and Expenditure of the Egyptian Family: A Case Study of Gharbia Governorate

Abstract

This research paper is aimed at studying and analyzing expenditure of families food and non-food commodities across different income levels in the rural and urban areas of Gharbia Governorate, Egypt during the spread of the newly discovered corona virus. Specifically, it monitored the consumer's purchasing behaviors according to the current economic and social situations and the most important ways and methods used by the family to curtail the pandemic and it's effect. Similarly, the result from the evaluation of the effect of corona pandemic revealed that the number of families whose income decreased during the pandemic in the sample of rural and urban areas in Gharbia governorate is about 85, 149 families, and the categories that are harmed the most by the pandemic are those who work in professions with unfixed payment which represent 60.9% of the total number of families in the sample which reached 384 families, the most important reasons to the decrease of the household income are : the cessation of work of one of the family members, imposing the precautionary measures, stoppage of work of some of the family members, decrease of demand on the activity, low wages, decreasing work days and hours and irregular work, while some families dealt with this decrease in income through some necessary measures such as: dispensing with some quantities of unnecessary commodities when their price rises, and also some families relied on consumption of what can be planted or raised at home and/or receiving subvention from the Egyptian government during the stoppage of work which represents about 74.4%, 55.7%, 3.1% respectively from the total research sample.