Impact on Earnings and Expenditure of Indian Households during Lockdown due to the outbreak of COVID-19.

Abstract

COVID-19 is an entirely new pandemic and the resulting precautions taken to limit its spread have never been experienced to the level it is been followed at present. Lockdown is one such precaution taken by the government to limit the movement of people thereby limiting the spread of the disease. Therefore, the production lines at the industries were halted, schools and educational institutions remained close. This caused fear among the population and they started stocking up things of necessity. Through this paper, we have tried to formulate a regression model to find out which type of job has the most effect on the earnings of the households and households shifted or reduced expenditure on which items during the lockdown. The data collection is done through a survey and a total of 456 respondents' data was analyzed. It was found that private job, government job, and business each has impacted the earnings of the household during the lockdown. Major items which saw a reduction in expenditure are the petrol/fuel/traveling expense, online food ordering, school/college fee and online shopping whereas items such as internet/wifi, online entertainment subscriptions, LPG/kitchen fuel, medical goods saw an increase in expenditure.