Establishing a Continuous Welfare Monitoring System in Zimbabwe

Abstract

Soon after the onset of COVID-19, the Zimbabwe Statistics Office (ZIMSTAT), with technical and financial assistance from the World Bank and UNICEF, started a high-frequency household survey to monitor the socioeconomic impact of the pandemic. Similar surveys were implemented by several national statistics offices around the world (World Bank, 2023). Between July 2020 and January 2023, ZIMSTAT conducted nine rounds of phone surveys. The base questionnaire was the global COVID-19 questionnaire developed by the World Bank. It was customized for Zimbabwe by adding or modifying some questions and changing the response options for other questions. After every round, ZIMSTAT, the World Bank, and UNICEF jointly prepared and disseminated a summary brief with the key findings. The briefs documented the impact of the pandemic on outcomes such as job loss, poverty, food security, school enrollment, coping strategies, access to basic services, and public assistance, among others. The briefs were intended for the national audience, which included the policymakers, development partners, and academia. They also informed World Bank policy dialogue and other diagnostics such as the Country Economic Memorandum (CEM) and Country Economic Update (CEU) (World Bank, 2021; World Bank, 2023). Based on the successful implementation of the high-frequency phone survey, this note argues for instituting continuous welfare monitoring in Zimbabwe's national statistical system.