Socio-Economic Effects of COVID-19 Pandemic on Health Status in Ekiti and Ondo States, Nigeria

Abstract

Introduction: The coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has become a serious threat to human existence and at the same time causing a lot of traumatic socio-economic losses to people and nations globally. To this effect, studies have examined the impact of the pandemic in Nigeria, but not much has been said on the socio-economic effects of the pandemic on health status. This research work therefore, examines the socio-economic effects of COVD-19 pandemic on health status of people in Ekiti and Ondo States in Nigeria. Data from 663 respondents was obtained from the cross-section of adults age 18-65, using a self-structured open and close-ended questionnaire. Variables such as health status, occupation, income, education among others were used. Methods: Ordered Probit model was specified to investigate the effect of the pandemic on health status and the maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) was used as the estimation technique. Also, descriptive statistics was conducted to examine the demographic features of the respondents. Results and Findings: The results show that COVID-19 pandemic has both negative and positive socio-economic effects on health status among the majority of the participants. A decrease in school closure and job loss/ business closure makes respondents more likely to be in good health with 6.562% and 7.194% probabilities respectively. However, the probability that a respondent will be in a good health as a result of a positive change in income is 0.463%. This indicates that a positive change in income has a positive effect on health status, while school closure and job loss/business closure during COVID-19 have negative effects on health status. The study recommends that welfare benefits, financial incentives, stimulus package to both individuals and firms, while remote learning strategies are implemented to rebalance and boost people’s welfare in both states.