Looking back: Insights from the World Bank COVID-19 household monitoring dashboard

In June 2023, the COVID-19 Household Monitoring Dashboard released its 18th  edition. For over 3 years, the dashboard has shared harmonized high-frequency phone survey (HFPS) data to provide a near real-time picture of a rapidly evolving crisis. With data from 423 survey rounds across close to 90 countries, the dashboard is one of the largest sources of household data in developing countries throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. While this is the last and final edition, the dashboard will remain online as a valuable source of data for researchers and policymakers.

Harmonized HFPS data from the dashboard informed policies designed to reduce hardships during the pandemic and influenced World Bank lending and operations. It was also widely used to track the impact of the pandemic in a variety of topics, including its effects on labor markets and employment (Brunckhorst et al. 2023, Hatayama et al. 2022, Khamis et al. 2021), barriers to medical care (Swindle and Newhouse, 2021; Ballon et al. 2021), education disruptions (Dang et al. 2021; Muñoz-Najar et al. 2021), intergenerational mobility (Azevedo et al. 2023), inequality (Narayan et al. 2022), and poverty (Mahler et al. 2022).

This interactive story showcases the key data available on the COVID-19 Household Monitoring Dashboard. Although the COVID-19 public health emergency has officially ended, households across the globe have yet to fully recover from the disruptions to lives and livelihood. Hard evidence to understand the medium and long-term impacts of the pandemic on welfare is essential to the design of policies that speed up recovery and help us prepare for future crises. The COVID-19 Household Monitoring Dashboard provides this evidence, making it an invaluable tool for policymakers and researchers alike.