COVID-19 has had widespread consequences in Nairobi, Kenya, including the loss of earnings and starvation. Anecdotal evidence suggests that women have fared disproportionately worse, with higher incidences of job loss, skipped meals, and increased household work. This project seeks to understand how COVID has shaped employment and well-being for a diverse group of respondents. Even without a global crisis, it is difficult to track earnings in settings where informal work prevails. To overcome this challenge, this project tracks earnings alongside a novel measure, the value of time. This measure captures changes in opportunity costs and in doing so, reveals respondents’ economic situations and well-being. By developing and tracking this value of time measure, this project also seeks to provide information that can be used to target aid or employment support to those who are stuck in an unemployment or underemployment trap as a result of coronavirus disruptions.
