A white paper from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation outlines policy recommendations for driving an equitable global economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and addressing its potential long-term impacts.

The report, Opportunity and an Equitable Economic Recovery (16 pages, PDF), outlines key concerns with regard to economic recovery in developing countries and proposes priority financing and policy approaches designed to help free up additional resources, accelerate growth, and ensure that the recovery is broadly equitable. To that end, the white paper focuses on three areas: protecting vital investments in human capital, including education, primary health care, and nutrition programs; driving productive opportunity by supporting digital transformation, the agricultural sector, and women's labor force participation; and creating a policy architecture of growth and inclusion, including fair, inclusive tax and fiscal systems and data capacity in support of development. Given that globally, women have been nearly twice as likely as men to lose their jobs during the pandemic, are much more likely to have caregiving responsibilities, and are much less likely to have access to subsidies and benefits, the white paper calls for policies that center women and help redress historic gender disparities.

"If economic recovery in the developing world is going to be dynamic and durable," the report's authors write, "it will require concerted efforts to get the marginalized populations that have been hit hardest by the pandemic back to work and into the economic mainstream."

"Without dramatic action, the long-term negative economic and social impacts of the pandemic, often referred to as 'scarring' by economists, will cause even more long-term damage in the developing world: Fewer jobs, lower earnings, poorer health, and more deaths among those already hardest hit," wrote Gargee Ghosh, president of global policy and advocacy at the Gates Foundation. "Women and other traditionally marginalized groups almost always bear the brunt of such scarring because of both their already precarious position in societies and the coping strategies they are forced to adopt, such as cutting back on food and selling what few productive assets they may possess."