HEALTH VULNERABILITY VERSUS ECONOMIC RESILIENCE TO THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to understand how countries have leveraged on their economic resilience to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. The focus is on a global sample of 150 countries. The study develops a health vulnerability index (HVI) and leverages on an existing economic resilience index (ERI) to provide four main scenarios from which to understand the problem statement, namely ‘low HVI-low ERI,’ ‘high HVI-low ERI,’ ‘high HVI-high ERI,’ and ‘low HVI-high ERI’ quadrants. Countries that have robustly fought the pandemic are those in the ‘low HVI-high ERI’ quadrant and, to a lesser extent, countries in the ‘low HVI-low ERI’ quadrant. Most European countries, namely one African country (Rwanda), four Asian countries (e.g., Japan, China, South Korea, and Thailand), and six American countries (e.g., United States, Canada, Uruguay, Panama, Argentina, and Costa Rica) are apparent in the ideal quadrant.