COVID-19 pandemic, losses of livelihoods and uneven recovery in Pune, India

Abstract This study examines the patterns of losses in livelihoods, income and consumption expenditure among slum dwellers in Pune, a city in western India, two years after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. A four-round panel dataset is used for this study with two rounds collected before (in-person in 2018 and 2019) and two rounds collected after (via phone interviews in 2020 and 2022) the start of the pandemic. Although at the macro-level gross domestic product and unemployment rates had started to recover by mid-2020, the results of this study show that recovery of livelihoods among individuals living just above subsistence level has been very limited and uneven even two years after the start of the pandemic. Additionally, younger and less educated individuals are more vulnerable to welfare losses. Examining food consumption patterns, consumption of cereals recovered to pre-pandemic levels by 2022 but the consumption of fruits and vegetables remained below the 2019 level, thus having important implications for nutritional health.