Corona - Poverty, Volunteers & Carers

Corona is a health catastrophe, but it impacts different areas of society in different ways apart from the physical. Poverty makes coping with Corona much harder & many more people are going to be experiencing poverty & hardship than previously. 14% of people have lost their job or had their hours reduced in the UK according to YouGov. That's 1 in 20. 1 in 11 have had pay or hours reduced. Almost 500,000 people applied for Universal Credit in March. Then there is the impact on the self employed, which is being researched currently.

While foodbanks are trying to cope with as much as an 80% increase in takeup, they are also having to deal with a huge drop in donations. In addition they are having to tell mostly aged Volunteers to stay at home for their own safety.

In America 15,000,000, yes 15,000,000 people have had their water cut off because they can't pay their bills. America for goodness sake, which is the world's biggest economy with a GDP of $20,494,100 (China is closest with $13,608,152). In the USA 38.1 million people lived in poverty in 2018 that's 11.8%. As of 2017 20% of UK people live in poverty. Covid 19 is set to make that rise.

Volunteering is hugely important to economies. In the UK:-

• In 2017/18, 30% of people aged 25–34 formally volunteered at least once a year, and 15% at least once a month (regularly), the lowest across different age groups.
• The highest rates of volunteering can be found among 65–74 year olds, with 42% at least once a year, and 29% regularly.  
• Women are more likely than men to have formally volunteered (40% vs 35%)

Social distancing & self isolating obviously means that workforce, which keeps our society ticking over, has largely disappeared.

Then there are the Carers:-

• There are around seven million Carers in the UK  – that is one in ten people.
• Three in five people will be Carers at some point in their lives in the UK.
• 42% of Carers are men and 58% are women. 
• The economic value of the contribution made by Carers in the UK is £132bn a year
• As many as one in five children and young people are young Carers

The economy literally probably couldn't function without Carers, who are unpaid & largely unsupported by Government. Just think how many Carers are living in unimaginably difficult circumstances in this pandemic.

As the weeks drag on the implications of Covid 19 become more & more obvious & widespread. It is truly a virus in more ways than one. It's tentacles are spreading not just through bodies, but through the very fabric of our communities & society. It's destroying our networks. Hopefully we will replace them with something better.

   

It's a huge web of consequences with the Corona spider at it's core.