| 摘要: | Background: The repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic drastically aggravated the state of financial security in lower-middle-income countries in Latin America. These countries included Belize, Bolivia, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua in 2019. The onset of the pandemic outbreak triggered the implementation of strategic social policies that prioritize the reduction of the spread of Covid-19. These restrictive measures extrapolated pre-pandemic conditions to a new level, driving the state of financial security of households to unforeseen conditions. The aim of the study is to determine and compare the factors influencing the state of financial security in lower middle-income countries during wave one and wave two in 2021.
Methods: The data source was identified as the Covid-19 High-frequency phone surveys conducted by the world bank. Wave one included data collected from early June to July 2021. Wave two included data collected from late October to early December 2021. A total of 14 questions were used to analyze the following variables influencing financial security, Age of the head of the household, Gender, Coping mechanism to financial strain, employment, income status, education level, and geographical location. All descriptive statistics were summarized using frequency distributions and chi-square was used to test for significant association of variables
Dummy coding transformation was used to facilitate the process of further binary logistic regression using stepwise elimination. The Wald’s chi-square and the odds ratio were used for further analysis. The goodness of fit test by Hosmer and Lemeshow was performed for each logistic regression model. All analyses were set at a statistical significance of p < 0.05.
Results: Financial insecurity in households was found to have increase from wave one 13.5% to wave two 68.41% The findings of the logistic regression for wave one show country, gender, employment, education level and income status influenced financial security. Findings in the wave two logistic regression found country, income status, education level influenced the state of financial security. The Hosmer and Lemeshow test were insignificant for both wave one (p=0.8276)and wave two (p=0.9525).
Conclusion:
Findings of the study show that the state of financial security was significantly influenced by country, income status and education level for both waves. Financial insecurity was associated with households with lower levels of education, male led households and decrease of income status. |
