Poverty eradication is a significant primary response to achieving sustainable development and mitigating social and structural inequalities.1 At the individual level, poverty is the deprivation of basic human needs, and deprived people may face difficulties in improving their personal and environmental conditions with fewer resources. Furthermore, external shocks can exacerbate these conditions. External shocks include natural disasters, climate and health changes, global economic crises, and pandemics, such as COVID-19. These shocks not only decrease household welfare by directly depleting assets and triggering the decapitalization of productive assets and human capital2, 3, 4 but also perpetuate poverty.5

During the COVID-19 crisis, societal inequalities in medical, financial, and welfare services intensified. The pandemic has led to job losses, reduced income, and economic uncertainty, severely affecting low-income populations and increasing income inequality.6 Consequently, the pandemic resulted in the first increase in the global poverty rate since 1990, and existing concerns have become a reality.6 Particularly, the pandemic has sent the most vulnerable and marginalized groups—those with disabilities and older adults—into more deplorable conditions.

Although no approach can explain the economic fallout of the pandemic precisely, economists agree on its significant adverse effects on the global economy.7 At the macro level, the pandemic has decreased national economic growth, regardless of the development level of a country, resulting from reduced agricultural activities, production networks, trade, and tourism.7, 8, 9, 10

At the individual level, COVID-19, as an external shock, has deprived individuals of health and economic status, creating a vicious cycle.11 Several studies have shown that health shocks aggravate poverty.12, 13, 14 Poor people are vulnerable to health shocks because they lack sufficient savings to cope with crises.12 Moreover, after experiencing health shocks, poor households cannot buy sufficient food or pay for high-quality healthcare.13 Specifically, the health shock induces temporary poverty owing to increased medical expenses and reduced work capacity.

In this respect, the COVID-19 pandemic, as an external shock, affects the state of poverty at both the macro and micro levels. Therefore, the present study elucidates how certain groups not in poverty before the COVID-19 outbreak experienced a rapid decline into poverty immediately after the outbreak.

Poverty dynamics refer to “the poverty flow patterns that underlie the observed poverty rate at a point in time”.15 Poverty is not a static phenomenon; it implicitly represents changes in the conditions individuals face. The nonpoor can fall below the poverty line because of external shocks such as crop loss or job loss, whereas the poor can escape poverty by gaining employment16 or having access to improved infrastructure.12 Movements in and out of poverty are captured by “poverty transitions”.17 The chronically poor are individuals whose consumption expenditures and household income remain below the poverty line across all observation periods.18 Transient poor are individuals whose expenditure or household income is not always below the poverty line.18 The nonpoor are individuals whose consumption expenditure and household income remain above the poverty line across all observation periods.18

The transition to poverty indicates that external shocks can temporarily drive an individual's downward or upward mobility.19 We can identify the patterns of poverty-related group mobility by considering the shifting states of poverty and the dynamics of escape from poverty, impoverishment, and chronic poverty.

This study examined the poverty dynamics in South Korea before and after the COVID-19 outbreak. South Korea is a developed country, ranked 9th in nominal gross domestic product and 4th in purchasing power parity among the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. However, South Korea ranks 26th among the 37 OECD countries in terms of income inequality20 and has the highest poverty rate among OECD countries.21 The remarkable and rapid development of the South Korean economy conceals the dark place left behind by its unequal societal structure. Specifically, in 2019, South Korea's poverty rate for people with disabilities stood at 48.3 %, which is significantly higher than South Korea's overall poverty rate of 14.5 %.22

After the United Nations established 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, including objectives such as No Poverty, Zero Hunger, and Climate Action, South Korea has formulated implementation strategies for each of these goals.23,24 Notably, regarding SDG Goal #1, which aims to “end poverty in all its forms everywhere,” there has been a substantial reduction in the poverty rate in South Korea since 2017.24 However, despite South Korea's effective mitigation of the pandemic's impact on society, the poverty rate has increased from 14.4 % in 2019 to 15.6 % in 2020.22

This study provides insights into South Korea's poverty response policies and may serve as a reference for other countries that have experienced or will experience similar levels of development in the future. This study addresses the following research questions: How did income levels differ between individuals with and without disabilities during the pandemic? What were the patterns of poverty dynamics in South Korea for individuals with and without disabilities before and after the COVID-19 outbreak? How do individual and household characteristics affect the probability of households being classified into different poverty dynamic groups?