Monitoring COVID-19 Impact on Households in Zimbabwe, Report No. 2 : Results from a High-Frequency Telephone Survey of Households

The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic created an urgent need for timely information to help monitor and mitigate the social and 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 survey builds on the Poverty, Income, Consumption and Expenditure Surveys (PICES) of 2017 and 2019 and used a sample of 1747 households in round 1 and 1639 households in round 2 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 second round of the Rapid PICES, conducted from August 24th to September 23rd, 2020, and compares them to the findings of the first round conducted between July 6th and 24th, 2020. Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) was used for data collection. An overview of the findings of the key indicators for both rounds is provided at the end of this note