Unhealthy Shock: Changes in Household Expenditures in the First Wave of COVID-19 in India

This article uses nationally representative household survey data between June 2019 and 2020 from India to examine changes in household consumption expenditure following the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that across rural and urban households, there was a strong reduction in overall expenditures, in particular, related to food and health. This corroborates findings from existing literature on food insecurity during the first lockdown in India (March-April 2020) and provides the first set of estimates on changes in health expenditure for this period. Although there were expansions to health insurance and subsidized COVID-related healthcare costs in India, our findings likely do not reflect this. We discuss implications for policy and outline future work.