Hi, it's Bridget. Welcome to Above Life Channel. Here the purpose is to inspire your spirit and today's afterlife duo. I hope we'll do that.  These two, interviewing these two, I think it's important to acknowledge both of them together. However, I'm not sure who will come forward first. And in this particular conversation, I've decided that the casual conversation style really works well. I think for me to get to know them, so I'm dipping my toe in the water of the energy of these two individuals. And I know a little bit about them, but not a whole ton. Like I don't know detail information about them. And so I think just a casual conversation, get to know ya kind of conversation, introductory conversation is what this will be. So I just want to be clear on that. I get to know ya. Hi, let's get to know ya. All right.  And that's happened mostly through songs. But every once in a while, I actually kind of feel an imagery come forward that is her essence. And it is Ms. Whitney Houston. And with that, of course, we welcome as well to our conversation her daughter, Ms. Bobby Christina. And so I think it's really important to allow them to come in together. However, Bobby Chris really feels more quiet and really cuddling up to her mother energetically is what I see. It's really important for you to know if you're a Whitney Houston fan or a Bobby Christina fan, to know that they are together in the afterlife.   You don't actually have to leave your body to be close and connect with your loved ones who are not in their body anymore. I really want to be clear on that. I think it's really important to know that. All right, so for those of you who are fans of Whitney and her daughter, just know that they are together. And it did break Whitney's heart energetically to know that her daughter wasn't so much pain and struggling so much.  And she's acknowledging that she was a bad example for her daughter and that she recognizes that her daughter's heart was breaking when Whitney was so sick and when Whitney was struggling with her addictions and it almost looks like she has like a bipolar disorder, like a highs and a lows and highs and lows and highs and lows. But I feel like that may be because of the drug addiction part. Do you know what I mean? Sometimes drug abuse and drug use, depending upon the types of drugs that are being utilized by an addict, it can kind of sometimes feel like a mental illness. So it's like what came first, the mental illness or the drug addiction? Because energetically, the high and the low and the high and the low, the bipolar kind of energy feels like addiction to me when I tap into it. So I'm not saying that Whitney Houston was bipolar. I'm saying that she feels like the swings of that were either caused by the drug addiction and the drug use or amplified by them. I'm not sure which was first. And it doesn't really matter because both are mental health concerns. Let's be clear on that.  I just want to say that, Whitney, because I feel like I need to say that for you to share with you that I have a respect for and a recognition of the struggles that you've had. And although I haven't experienced that myself, I can simply say that I'm compassionate toward those struggles for you and recognize as a mother how impactful that would feel for me to. Looking back, I have a daughter as well. And so I can understand that from a mother-daughter perspective, how much you would feel responsible for her pain. And then she says, well, I was quite literally I was. She says, I was. She says, Bridget, there's no question about it. I caused it. I created the situation and the circumstances that resulted in her pain, which ultimately ended up in her death. She chose to leave this life because of me, because I am her mother. That's what Whitney says. I am her mother. And she wanted to be with me. She was so worried, Bobby Christina, she's referring to Bobby Christina, Whitney is saying she was so worried about me being alone, me being lonely because that was the biggest thing that I struggled with was loneliness. I struggled with loneliness. And to fill that whole inside, it just wasn't possible. And she knows that she felt that she saw it, she lived it.  Bobby Christina is very quiet. And I'm looking at her. She's a very round face, and a unique smile, you know, she I think she has like a little it looks like a little space in between her teeth, very round face, but her face looks really puffy. So I can't tell if that's like, is that normal? She says, it's the drug abuse. Whitney speaks for her, when he says it's the drug abuse, over time it, she said, there's so much build up on your skin underneath your skin, like the cells in your skin, it's like they stretch and they just expand and they just hold these toxins.  I'm not I'm not even saying street drugs versus pharmaceutical drugs. I'm saying the drugs that you're using, how much it gathers and it pools under your skin. And it just really builds up toxins and other people can see it. And you can see when you look in the mirror, all you see is the drug effect. And you don't see the beauty, there's no more beauty anymore. There's no more beauty anymore. Whitney, I have to share with you that I was not overly excited about connecting with you as you may well know, because it seems as though sometimes when I connect with spirit that have left the earth with tragedy, you know, with an overdose for you is what basically happened is what I see. I know my mind knows the story that you were found in the tub. Unconscious. And that there were drugs in your system. I know that it was an overdose situation. But that and that's hard to feel and channel people that have that. Quite frankly, it's difficult. And she says right away, she said, I don't blame you. I don't blame you for that. It's not easy to live with either. And that's the point. People shouldn't have to live with this. People shouldn't have to live with drug abuse, they shouldn't people shouldn't have to turn to that those means of numbing pain. So is that what you did with the medications? I mean, what was the big influencer for you with your drug experience with with being utilizing drugs and then having them be kind of a dependency thing? If that's what happened? I mean, how did that start for you? Would you mind sharing? I think it's important for other people, especially people who know people that have addictions or loved ones or family members or themselves have struggled with addiction. What would you, you know, share that a little bit? Can you share talk about that? Early on, it was speed, she says. So okay, so speed is cocaine, right? Because in my head, I can see like white powder and lines I'm assuming that's cocaine.  You're so vanilla. Like, yeah, kind of. Yeah, never did that. So um, and so she said early on it was speed and it and it kept your metabolism high, kept you energized, you know, being able to, to do things to make things happen to work on things and then eventually using it to, you know, pick you up when you were had low energy. When you were down, she says down, I said, I say low energy, because I can feel like she's like, oh, I just can't. Oh my gosh, what am I going to do here? I need something to help me. Coffee just doesn't do it. It's just not enough.  She's not showing me performing like on stage, so taking mediums to take speed at first to perform on stage. She's showing it to me to like get into the studio or to make records and deal with people, right? Is that more? She said, yeah, and then it becomes more recreational too. Like then it kind of comes into your personal life. And so you're using it, you use it maybe at a party here or there or what have you and it helped you, you know, it seemed like it helped you at the time. And so then you use it a little more and use it for this and use it for that. And then she's saying she's showing me that she got prescription right away too. So she's tried she tried speed it started with speed and then she got a prescription to help her. Okay, so what was the prescription for? She says anxiety. It was one of the medications you can use for anxiety and then then I got some for depression. And it looks like there were three and then there was a fourth at one point. Are you showing me actually your transition? Because I'm kind of feeling like I'm at the edge of a sink, a counter on a bathroom, and I'm not at my house. I feel like I'm some place else besides my home.  Did you leave the earth? So the tub wasn't at home. I feel like one of them left at home and one of them left in a hotel or someplace else. It kind of looks like a townhouse, but it might be a really fancy. I'm really confusing the two of you. Can we separate you and your daughter? Because I can feel I know both of you died the same way. Theoretically, like we're not sure we don't know all the details. But I know that both were in the bathroom bathtub. I feel like at one of my properties or one of my common places that I stayed or I was staying someplace for an extended period of time.  I almost feel like Las Vegas. Like almost like I'm I'm doing a show or something and I have a place that I often will stay or an area that will stay and so I have a place and then I feel like there's a series of shows and things like that. So were you in the middle of things when you died? Yes. In the middle of a a booked kind of an event. It looks like there was multiple shows and it was in the middle of that. Um but I'd already been sick one night. It looks like I'd already been sick. I was struggling really hard at the end. I was really struggling bad and I really needed help. I needed you know but you don't listen. I needed rehab but I needed more than rehab. I needed um more than tough love. I needed really strict discipline. I I don't know what could have saved me is what she's saying. I don't know what could have saved me. So did okay so we know how it started. Your you know experience.  She said it wasn't constant. I didn't constantly do drugs for ten years but I was on and off and on and off. It looks like eight dash ten. So eight to ten years or gosh you know before when I was hooking up my microphone I even saw like 2008 with something pivotal and then I see so and then I'm also seeing like 2010 and I'm seeing kind of bouncing around a little bit. Um I do know too Whitney that you had a reality TV show with Bobby. I know he was like the love of your life. I also know he wasn't faithful. I mean that's pretty obvious energetically. You can totally feel that energy vibe. I don't know for sure. I mean maybe I'm you know speaking out of turn here but um she says oh but that's it's not his it's not his fault. He's not the reason why I made the choices I did. She's like no I'm not playing with Bobby at all. No no no. Um so where did the pressure come from? Where did the pressure to come from? Where did the the need to to be on or to be high or to be whatever to medicate? Where did that come from? What caused that? She says my past my life before Bobby. She says there was a time when when we were having the baby that everything was so good. It was just so good. It was such a sweet time and when Bobby Christina was born it was just you know the first two years. I mean it was just such a sweet time a sweet time and I wasn't sure I'd be a good mother. I just wasn't sure I I could do that. I didn't know if I was cut out for that and it's scary you know. She's saying this is um Whitney sharing this.  She's like just a lot of worry kind of energy and fear mixed together about wanting to keep your child safe and protect them. But you can't always do that. I mean you can't do that. Every mom knows. Every parent knows that. You can't really do that. You know no amount of worrying is going to protect your child. You have to teach them wisely. That's the place where I failed. I didn't teach her in the right way. The right ways of coping. So okay so Whitney I'm feeling like like I'm I'm getting some background information on you energetically and I think you're just sharing it with me but you're not speaking about it. So if it's all right can I talk a little bit about childhood for you? There definitely looks like um for those of you who are watching to this interview here at above life channel with Whitney Houston and her daughter Bobby Christina is also present but Whitney's doing the talking at this point. She is sharing with me that I definitely feel like and she's sharing as a feeling sensing like I get access I can I can know some of these things about her past. It's not an excuse and she wants to be very clear she's saying I'm not an excuse. There's no excuse for making yourself a prisoner to drugs. She says there's no excuse for that but I can feel and see sense energetically that there was definitely child abuse. Child sex abuse is what it looks like. I hope I'm not speaking out of turn or sharing anything that anybody else doesn't know. I don't know the history of the family or the experiences or what have you related to Whitney, Whitney related to your life. She said she was successful young like she was acknowledged recognized as a good singer very young and she was involved in the church it looks like she's saying in the church yes yes and people take advantage of you and your family and you know she says all it takes is once she said but it happened multiple times for me and there's definitely an abuse of male. There's also a female that was not helpful to her at all like jealous of her envious of her. I can see that she's kind of making me let me see that but again she's like that's no excuse and she feels like she was isolated from her family like she pushed her family away as soon as she was able to. I feel like there's I'm not sure about mom I don't understand a relationship with her mom she's not showing me that like I'm not feeling warm and fuzzy but I'm also not feeling I hate you I'm not sure about what's going on with mom. I don't understand that mom part I don't know if there was no mom I feel like there was a mom around but I don't feel like it was she's not talking about it right now she's not sharing that point that's not the point of this particular conversation okay. I feel like there's definitely a male child sex abuse more than one it looks like there was potentially two different men at different times one related to Hollywood or that kind of thing and then one related to family or church or some school or something like that some place that would be safe one place that you would not expect at all and then the other was the Hollywood thing which is she's like not that you'd expect that but didn't surprise her kind of thing so that was painful that was difficult that was a there was trauma she's saying trauma like feeling really traumatized oh yeah it's hard to feel that energy of that just the feeling of the trauma just you know she says but I want to be clear I don't want anybody feeling sorry for me I don't want anybody to feel sorry for me and she says and to answer your question Bridget yes it was an accident I didn't try to kill myself I didn't intentionally try to die I had tried before I tried suicide before I tried to kill myself before unsuccessful but this particular case I wasn't planning to kill myself are you sure about that because I'm feeling conflicted about that as soon as you say that or as soon as I feel that I feel conflicted like like yeah maybe you were trying to commit suicide I wasn't what she's trying to say okay oh I have a huge hit in my solar plexus my stomach it just hurts right now I just feel like I just got punched in the gut um I'm okay so I'm gonna ask Archangel Michael to come in Archangel Michael will you come in because Archangel Michael is a protector and really strong secure energy also for Whitney and her daughter and for myself to just help barrier the energy so Whitney what's the truth of the situation of your the moment you know when you left the earth she says I thought it wasn't real I thought it was just it was like a dream was all fuzzy everything was just fuzzy and I could hear people yelling and pounding on the door and of course you're gonna lock the door you're gonna lock the door because you want privacy it's not something you know nefarious or something you know is planning or something I mean that's ridiculous that's ridiculous okay so but Whitney I know that it feels like you've kind of been able to kind of talk around the topic of suicide or of um you know even addiction and stuff but you're really upfront about the addiction right now which I really appreciate and respect that in the afterlife it's great for people as human people to recognize that you get it you understand this intensity of how this really affected your life and your daughters which is where you feel the most remorse I can feel that and she's healing by the way if you're watching this and you're concerned about Whitney or her daughter healing they're healing they're healing um Whitney I feel like she's more evolved and moving up toward closer toward light toward a total complete healing but she still in the process is what it feels like to me does that make sense yeah and because I think there's this separation between like I can't quite feel the truth around your death and not that it's something that should define you but I think that it's key to your healing is to acknowledge if you tried to commit suicide or if you um I think it simply was an accidental overdose and she says I just want the pain to go away I just wanted to stop the hurt and I'd already not been feeling well I hadn't been feeling well for days and I'd been on so many different medications that I was kind of in a fog or a haze anyway and I think I just took that lethal next dose and it knocked me unconscious and I wasn't able to I passed I basically passed out in the bathtub and I drown that's what happened to me and anyone that's ever been drunk or had a blackout experience or anything like that from drugs or alcohol or or any kind of illness or whatever would understand that you do blackout and you just don't remember anything and you don't know what happened and that's basically what happened that's what caused my death was actual drowning if if everyone I I think that's important for you guys to know that that that's what caused her drown she drowned is what it looks like but it doesn't look like she took in a it doesn't look like she took on purpose try to take a bunch of meds is that correct the yes ma'am yes ma'am however there is a time it looks like a pharmacy in your bathroom she says I I don't argue that that's a fact that's a fact and it looks like yellow like a yellow bottle or a yellow pill or something um the dosage of something it just look like it's toxic toxic toxic just building up and building up and building up it doesn't look like there was too many at one time it was like that was the dose that just tipped over the edge and created blackout experiencer scenario passing out and then the drowning yeah she said yeah yes she said it kind of felt like I was paralyzed and I was kind of when everything was foggy and I knew I was dying in my heart I think I thought oh I think I I felt that was possible but at the same time I didn't believe it was actually possible happening was it actually happening because I had tried to kill myself before and um Bobby found me one of those times and uh you know some of that stuff's not public Bridget you know I have struggled with not just addiction but um with my emotions for my entire life and there is a lot there are a lot better ways to manage your pain to heal your pain alcohol drugs that just not it numbs it to him it's just temporarily temporary temporary numbing it doesn't really do anything you wake up and then all that pain is there again it's it you can't really escape so it was it was pretty surreal and uh I can see a white an angel that's all white and an angel that's gold which I kind of love that gold angel that's like angel azrael who hopes from um spirit from heaven to earth to fully transform from human body into spirit and uh she says she sees her daughter just screaming screaming over her body um just screaming and I don't know if that's the funeral I'm seeing or she's seeing she's showing she acknowledges is an infallible recognition of all the pain that she caused her daughter and that's why her daughter um is here as well but her daughter's so connected to mommy mommy mommy she looks like the energy that Bobby christian is bringing forward isn't that of a young woman it's that of like a four-year-old child she can speak but not a lot three or four years old maybe even just really connected like a toddler connected to your mom that's how she feels she's very much earlier on in her healing process I would say 2014 seems pivotal I don't know what that has to do with anything and then two years later 2016 is what I feel um I don't know what that means 2014 is pivotal and I see two years later I know what that means I know there's a lot um around Bobby Christina's passing and I really can't feel her too much because she really feels like it's she feels very vulnerable but I want everyone to know that just because I'm feeling the spirits this way it doesn't mean they're stuck doesn't mean they're ghosts it doesn't mean they're not in heaven both Bobby Christina and Whitney Houston have loving energy of God the creator the source around them with them they're not trapped or anything like that they're just you can just I as a channel can just feel the energy in a different way than I might feel somebody else who is fully embraced to the spirit essence of themselves they definitely these two both definitely feel different parts of their path and their journey to heaven because that's kind of what it is to them they're not not in heaven I want to be clear I don't want people to be worried about that they're totally with God they totally have but they they have so much of their human life kind of overlaying on them and so to me that means it's hard for them to let go of some of that and so they're working on that process is that an accurate reflection yes she said that's a beautiful beautiful way to describe it she says since big smile by the way when I'm looking at Whitney you know how I see her I see her with her hair a short and like an abab and kind of a curly like a perm or something that's how I see her that's just really beautiful face and just gorgeous smile and very kind you know charming she's charming I would say a bit charming but she's real she's like oh well we're talking girl talk Bridget it's real we can talk real right and I'm like yes we can that's right um so her daughter is with her and we're not going to focus on her daughter I'm gonna do that at this time at this point so so if you've been watching me talk Whitney is on this side of me and Bobby Christine energy is on this side however when I feel them I feel Bobby Christine I just cuddled up to her mom like mommy mommy that's how I feel you know so um yeah that's uh that was uh this is pretty intense for me and so but I I'm hoping that for those of you who are watching that connecting with Whitney Houston has in some way helped you maybe it's inspired you to think about the whole um a concept around suffering around people self-medicating around drug abuse around mental health around um abuse and child abuse in a different way perhaps maybe that's what it's done I'm not sure maybe you can tell me in the comments below what did you get out of this initial conversation with Ms. Whitney Houston what did you get from this what did you what is your takeaway your one takeaway what is it go ahead and post that in the comments I'd like to know I'd like to know how it's impacted you today and as always if you have it if you have questions or comments or what you'd like to share about Whitney or Bobby Christina this particular video is really focused on Whitney so that's where I'm going to stay focused I will try to do another video in the future to incorporate her daughter when it's appropriate to do that so um we'll be open to that I'm open to that and we can connect and talk in the future as well so go ahead and put your comments below as well all right thank you thank you for your time thank you for your time thank you for thank you for being willing to be seen I'm a mom too I totally get it Whitney I totally get it I get how you feel about your daughter I totally get it this is Bridget at Above Life Channel thank you for being here today I hope that this conversation this afterlife interview has inspired you and given you some hope today remember this is your life now so live it thanks for being here


We're here at the AUSA battle challenge. This is the most important thing soldiers do every day, physical fitness is a critical skill necessary for us to fight and win our nation's wars in Colt Duce. A little bit more challenging than I thought it was going to be. Fight and win. Pretty hard to breathe at the end.


All right, so yeah, thanks for everyone for joining the presentation session on social protection. My name is Yeselastonen, I'll be working as the chair of this session. I'm a research associate at UNU wider, working mainly on tax benefit micro simulation modelling in our SouthMod project. I'd also like to welcome our presenters. We have Omalola Adeola from the University of Cape Town in South Africa, Valentina Martinez-Pabon from Tulen University in the U.S. We have Jara Gomez from the Federal University of Pernambuco in Brazil, Amakametu from the Namdi-Atsikiva University in Nigeria, and finally Christof Troupat from the German Development Institute. The five presentations are based on very interesting papers covering research on the impact of COVID-19 and related social protection measures on poverty and inequality in both South America and also Africa. So in terms of practicalities, we will have these five presentations back to back and we'll open it up for questions and answers at the end of the session. Presentations will be around six, seven minutes each. And as I already mentioned to the presenters, please try to keep with the time and have your presentations kind of ready to go so that we have around 15 minutes at the end for questions from the audience, which can be asked in the chat or in person if you let me know in the chat that you'd like to ask a question. And I think we'll start with Omalola, who actually has a pre-recorded presentation, but it is also here in person if the audience wants to ask questions. So I would ask Anna from wider communications to share that pre-recorded session and we'll start with that. So thanks. Good morning everyone and welcome to our presentation on COVID-19 social relief of district grants in South Africa. I am Omalola Adiola and this is a joint work with Rejoice Mabena. We are both post-doctoral research fellows with the Southern Africa Liberal and Development Research Unit, Soudru and African Center of Excellence for Inequality Research Asia at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. At the start of the pandemic, we saw various countries implement lockdown measures to cut the spread of the virus. South Africa was one of the countries that implemented the most stringent measures around the world and some of these measures worsened already existing imbalances such as inequality in various dimensions. What we know is that some of these sustainable development goals such as ending poverty and hunger might have been compromised and some of the measures implemented by South African governments to help citizens cope with the economic effects of the pandemic was to increase the value of existing grants and introduce a temporary social relief of district grants of 350 rand. Therefore, the objective of our study is to determine if the SRD grants significantly improved the living conditions of households as there was a large take-up of the grants between May and September 2020 where 9.15 million applications received the SRD grants. Social grants in South Africa is a comprehensive social protection measure which has reached over 18 million grants paid monthly as of March 2021. The data for our study is the needs crime data set. Needs crime is a national income dynamic study coronavirus rapid mobile survey and this is a data set drawn from the needs with five samples. The needs is a nationally representative panel study of over 28,000 South Africans followed every two to three years which started in 2008. The needs crime was carried out technically which started in the early days of the lockdown in 2020 to track people's income and employment status over the period of the pandemic. To date there are five waves of the needs crime available but we make use of the first four waves in our study. We estimate a conditional fixed effects logistic regression where households experiencing hunger take the value of one and zero otherwise and this first figure will see that household and child hunger were highest in the first wave with at least 22% and 15% respectively but by the second wave with the introduction of the SRD grants and top up to the existing grants we notice a reduction in household and child hunger and the second figure here we see that households that lost their main source of income during the lockdown experienced more hunger than households that did not lose their main source of income in all the waves. Hunger experiences however reduced drastically in the second wave which coincided with the introduction of the SRD grants. As we see it fell from 31.67% in the first wave to 22% in the second wave. In this third figure we see that households with at least one employed member had less chance of experiencing hunger compared to households with all members unemployed or not economically active. The results of our conditional fixed effect logistic regression shows that the recipients of social grants lowers the probability of experiencing hunger whereas the SRD grants did not have the same effect. We also notice that in our study that the existence of significant association between hunger outcomes and labour market status. Households with economically inactive individuals have a higher chance of experiencing hunger relative to households with employed members. When employment increases the odds of experiencing hunger. We see that people living in urban areas are the higher chance of experiencing hunger and non-monetary supports from the government NGO and community were significant in reducing hunger experiences for households. We also notice that for school for children in school feeding schemes there was less chance for likelihood of experiencing hunger which is really significant in our study. Therefore we see that the SRD grants lessened the chances of child hunger suggesting that the SRD grants had a positive impact on children's access to food more than it did for adults as you can see and this fourth and fifth color. So in conclusion in our study we see that social grants reduce hunger for households however the impact of the SRD grants was less obvious. This we see is probably due to the minimal value of the grants. During the lockdown non-monetary support mechanisms such as the community support research of food parcels and NGO support helped households to be more food secure. South Africa's high unemployment rate needs a more sustainable solution beyond the current social protection and therefore we recommend the introduction of a basic income grant with value over the upper bound poverty line in South Africa. Thank you for listening. Thank you. I then give it again to Anna who will share Valentina's presentation which is also prerecorded. Good morning my name is Valentina Martinez and I'm here to present my paper the impact of COVID-19 and expanded social assistance on inequality and poverty in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. This is joint work with Norelustik, Federico Sanz and Stephen Junger. This paper addressed two main research questions and the first one is what is the potential impact of COVID-19 on inequality and poverty in 2020. The second is who are the biggest losers across the precrisis income distribution and the third one is to what extent does the expanded social assistance mitigate the negative impacts. We obtained our estimates by simulating potential income losses at the household level using micro data from household surveys and the first step of our micro simulation is to identify a risk and not a risk income. So we defined not a risk income as the income coming from cash transfers, pensions, public employment remittances, labor income from essential sectors and labor income from white colors workers with internet access at home. We defined at risk income and the income coming from a not essential sectors, labor income from street pending and household income from rents. Once we identified the components of the household income, one of those is the income address. We simulate potential losses using two key parameters. The first one is the share of households with at risk income that lose income and the second is the share of at risk income loss for those losing income. In this matrix, which is an example, is the one for Argentina, we have in the rows the person that the share of households losing income and on the columns the share of income loss, so each parameter here, so each cell in this matrix represents a different scenario. The number in each cell is a total income that will contract based in that specific scenario. So we focus out of the 100 scenarios, the possible scenarios, we focus only on those for which the contraction comes closest to that predicted by the IMF for each country in 2020 and of those scenarios, in this case, the ones that are highlighted there, we focus only on the scenario for which the share of households that lose income as a role goes closest to that suggested by the high-frequency service. The third step in our simulation is to construct an income distribution that incorporates the losses and compare it with the extended income distribution and the fourth step is to simulate an income distribution that incorporates the effect of the pandemic, but also the new compensatory social assistance measures. Let me go directly to the results. Here we have the impact on inequality may measure by the unique coefficient and for each country we have the extent of the exposed and the exposed plus social assistance distributions. The first thing to highlight here is that the potential impact on inequality could be quite significant, but also that the social assistance significantly offsets the effect on inequality, so as you can see here based on the inequality but also here in poverty measured by the 5.5 ppp poverty line in Brazil for example, we have that the poverty is even lower than in the pre-exante situation. We have here ex ante exposed without and exposed with expanded social assistance, so on our results suggest that the government that have introduced new and substantial expansions on the existing social assistance offset a significantly share of the poverty and inequality caused by the crisis. So finally, let me present the Non-Anonymous Grat Incidents Curves. These figures presents the change in income at each percentage of the ex ante income distribution, so the bold line suggests that on average all households are worse off than in the situation before the crisis and the dash line suggests that once you account for the expanded social assistance, new and expanded social assistance on average the households are in a very situation, in particular the households and the poorer households and the negative slope in the bottom indicates that mitigation has been purported but also that the poorer households are end up with an income that is even larger than in the pre-crisis income in the pre-crisis. That is all, thank you very much. Thank you. Next we will have Jara Komes, who will actually present in person or well virtually in person, so you can start Jara. So good morning, sorry for the technical issues. So this paper was made with cahos and the name of the paper is liquided constraints, cash transfers and the demand to have care in the COVID-19 pandemic. So cash transfers during the pandemic have been justified on the basis of allow adherence to lockdown measures and also mitigate effects on the labor market and aggregate demand, but we think that cash transfers might have a third effect, that is cash transfers might directly affect demand for medical care. So why this might happening? So people might be suffering from liquided constraints, so the cost of opportunity of the daily earnings may be too high. So we predicted that with these cash transfers we will have diminished the lag between symptoms and medical care, but we will also increase hospitalizations just after people receive cash transfers because now they will be able to seek medical care. So Brazil implemented an emergency cash transfer program from April to December of last year. It was an conditional cash transfer, it was a very large program and it was relatively generous to for you to all have an idea. It was bigger than our currently bigger social program that was most of a million. So the government implemented a calendar that was made for other banks. So it was, the money was available by the month of the birth. So people who was born in January and February received the money earlier and people who was born in November and December received the money for the last. So we have this data for the municipalities and for each cohort and we have a daily data. So with this data we were able to use that opportunity in time. And the intuition behind this method is for each cohort to compare hospitalizations and the like to medical care just before and just after the transfer is made. So we are interested in the fact just after the cash transfer and the data was from the minister of health. So we have a large drop in the days to hospital. Can we? I don't know if it's. We can, I think. I think I have some problem here. Okay, so our results are that just after the cash transfer a drop in the like between people have the first symptom and seeking medical care, we measure this like between, they reported the symptom and here. Okay, so I think it's back. So we measure this, the first symptoms and when they get their COVID test. So after the, after they receive the cash transfer we have, so people get to the COVID test much earlier than it was getting before the cash transfer. And the fact of this was about 13% in the diminution of this like. And we also have increasing hospitalizations. So just after the cash transfer was made we have an increase in hospitalizations. So our explanation for this was so severe critical strain and they couldn't go to the hospital. And now we've received this cash transfer, they were able to demand medical care, they couldn't demand earlier. So I think this is the results. I'm having trouble, but it's, I'm done. Thank you. Thank you so much. Very interesting work. Then we have two more presentations. The next we will have Amaka Mehtu from the Nambi Azigiva University in Nigeria. Amaka, you want to share your screen? And just to say you have minutes, we don't have much time. Okay, sorry for that. No worries at all. Go ahead please. Okay, the topic is post COVID-19 pandemic. Does foreign aid mutine achieving inclusive growth in sub-Saharan Africa? The way the effect of COVID-19 in Africa may not be that much in terms of health status, in terms of debt effect, but it has caused a chance to measure flows in terms of trade, foreign direct investment and remittances. And for the fact that this flow of income has been affected, there is the possibility that sub-Saharan African countries, we find it very difficult to finance their economic activities in terms of reduction in poverty, inequality and unemployment. And we know that sub-Saharan Africa is characterized already by these ills of poverty, inequality and unemployment, showing that sub-Saharan African country economic growth is not inclusive, it does not encourage economic opportunities in terms of job employment and others. And despite these COVID-19 activities, the foreign aid flows into African countries from donor countries in 2020 alone is about $162 billion and bilateral aid to Africa at least developed countries rose by almost 1.1 and 1.8 respectively. And hence we assume that sub-Saharan African countries can leverage on these foreign aid in order to improve their economic activities in the pandemic. And our objective is to examine how sub-Saharan African countries can leverage this foreign aid in improving inclusive growth post COVID-19 pandemic and to examine the role of institutional environment. We were looking at the role of institutional environment because we found that despite it flows to African countries that they still find it difficult to achieve, to reduce poverty and unemployment. And studies by Goara has said that the environmental effect, the environment and institutions are the causes of Africa not achieving inclusive growth using their foreign aid. And we, in terms of methodology, we use for eight sub-Saharan African countries using data from 2000 to 2019 and we looked at foreign aid in terms of inclusive growth and we use inequality adjusted growth instead of the GDP which others have been using. And we also looked at other variables which literature has found to affect growth and our findings shows that institutional policy has a significant minimal impact on the level of inclusive growth in African countries. And then foreign aid, when we interacted foreign aid institution, it shows that foreign aid could actually improve inclusive growth. Based on these findings, our study suggests, is recommending for Africa to leverage on foreign growth and to leverage on these foreign aid coming into the country that there is need to strengthen commitment to development by improving government effectiveness. Also the donor countries can channel these aid to agriculture and education because of their link to human capital development. Thank you very much. Thank you so much Amaka and thanks for being quick. I was really impressed with that speed. So finally we have Christoph Struppat from the German Development Institute. Christoph, feel free to share your screen. Yeah, thank you for giving me the opportunity to present. This is joint work with Sam Sam, Arjun and Matthias. They are all at the Rasmus University in Rotterdam and the topic is, it's not fully related to social protection. We are focusing mostly on the COVID-19 vaccines in low income countries in particular from, we are focusing on Ethiopia. What is important to understand, of course, we all know in order to successfully control the pandemic, we really have to rely on the COVID-19, on the available COVID-19 vaccines. But what we can see and what we know also from the news and so on is that many low income countries in particular from Sub-Saharan Africa are lagging behind in their vaccination campaigns, which is mostly, of course, due to the limited vaccine supply. And it is important, of course, given these kind of limited vaccine supply, to plan the, hopefully, upcoming vaccine campaigns in low income countries very well in order to use these scarce resources most effectively. And therefore the vaccine acceptance and also maybe the willingness to pay for COVID-19 vaccines are important in months and factors in our view that needs to be considered. And when you look at the literature, you see that there are many studies. So the field of the literature is growing very fast. Many studies are focusing on the willingness to take COVID-19 vaccines in particular focused on high and middle income countries. But we are also seeing now many studies coming from low income countries, for example, also from many countries from Sub-Saharan Africa. And so the evidence base is growing. Only few studies have explored the willingness to pay for COVID-19 vaccines in low income countries. And what is also important to know that many of these studies are using phone or online surveys, which have some kind of limitations. What we have done, we have done an in-person survey of 2,332 randomly selected households in Ethiopia in October and November 2020, right before the conflict also started in Ethiopia. So we managed to do a national representative survey, which is only representative for the informal sector. And it was a joint project with the ILO and the Friedrich Ibert Foundation. And the overall aim of the project was really to understand the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the informal sector. But here in this presentation, we will focus on the vaccines. And first, of course, we would like to know what is the willingness to take and pay for COVID-19 vaccines in Ethiopia. And then, of course, second, is like to understand the socio-demographic colorates of the willingness to take and pay for COVID-19 vaccines. Yeah, in order to dive into the results, so the descriptive results, so we see that there's a high willingness to take COVID-19 vaccines in Ethiopia. We only see the first slide. Have you been switching slides in between? Okay, can you see it now? Yes, yes. And can you go to full-screen mode as well? Yeah, maybe this is troubling. It's a cause to trouble. But can you see now the slide switch? Yes, yes. Okay, I will leave it like this because the full-screen mode brings the trouble. You can see here now the willingness to take COVID-19 vaccine when it's available at the local market. So we have put these two questions. So here's again the slide with the research objectives, which you could not see probably, but here we have the descriptive results. So we see that almost 90% of our respondents, so as I said, representative for the informal sector in Ethiopia are willing to take COVID-19 vaccines. And conditional on those that are willing to take the COVID-19 vaccines, we see that 33% of them are also willing to pay for the COVID-19 vaccine. So we see this kind of gap between, of course, willingness to take the COVID-19 vaccine and willingness to pay for it, which is interesting. And in order to do a kind of analysis, our second research objective was to understand what are these sociodemographic correlates. So we have run a logistic regression model, very simple, including different predictors like age, gender education, and so on, but also health insurance coverage, for example. You know in Ethiopia we have a successful community-based health insurance scheme, and so on. And here the main results. So you can see what the turn of mind is willing is to take the COVID-19 vaccine. So this just correlates, but you can see that those families or those respondents that have experience with COVID-19 had an infection, of course, are more willing to take the COVID-19 vaccine. So we see a very strong positive correlation here. And what is also interesting, you have included question on trust in government and institutions, which also seems to be a kind of, seems to be strongly correlated, associated with the willingness to take the COVID-19 vaccine. So the higher the trust in the government institutions, the higher the willingness to take the COVID-19 vaccine seems to be a bit like this. We see nothing on education here, nothing on income. We see a bit something on age, that some of the age groups are less likely, or this seems to be a negatively correlated with the willingness to take COVID-19 vaccines. And then the second one is like, what the turn of mind is the willingness to pay for COVID-19 vaccines. So as I said, this is conditional on those that are willing to take as a COVID-19 vaccines. And here what we see here is a kind of income gradient. So those that are more wealthy are also more willing to pay for the COVID-19 vaccines. So 60% of those that are in the highest income groups are also willing to pay for COVID-19 vaccines. What is also interesting when you are covered by health insurance, those are also more willing to pay for it, like 40% of them. And you also see something a bit on trust and so on. So interesting correlations. Just to sum it up, what we find, what is very interesting is that there's in general a high willingness to take the vaccines in Ethiopia, which would also lead to the achievement of herd immunity. Potential reasons are we have very successful health insurance campaigns in the past and so on, substantial investments in health infrastructure. But of course, as I said, we have done the survey before the conflict and now this is maybe the main challenge given the conflict, how probably the vaccine, the willingness to take the vaccine has decreased in Ethiopia, which is very serious. We see these kind of large gaps between willingness to take and willingness to pay. But we see that many of our respondents are in the lowest income categories where the majority is not willing to pay. And this is really a strong call for free or subsidized COVID-19 vaccination programs and campaigns. It's very important in Ethiopia. And yeah, I will conclude by this statement and yeah, thank you for giving me the opportunity to do that, this work. Thanks a lot, Christof. So we were almost in time, so I'm really happy with this. We have 10 minutes for questions. If anyone from the audience wants to ask questions, you can write that in the chat. And while waiting, I have a few questions of my own. So maybe just to follow up on Christof's presentation, you showed that two thirds of those who wanted the vaccine would not like to have paid for one in the first place. And actually, as you also mentioned, those that would like to pay for a vaccine were mostly in the top of the income distribution. So kind of a practical question, how expensive are vaccines in Ethiopia and do people actually have to pay for them if they want one in certain regions, for instance? Should I answer directly? Yes, you can answer. Yeah, sure. Thanks. Yeah, currently the vaccines are, as I understood, are for free. So the vaccine campaigns are also very limited. I don't know the exact share of the population that is covered by the vaccines, but it's not so it's very low as compared to a high and middle income countries, unfortunately. And yeah, the prices are also changing. It's also difficult to say. So for example, the mRNA vaccines are more expensive than the vector-based vaccines and so on. And it depends. So, but yeah, in general, we think it's very important to mention that many are not willing to pay for it or maybe cannot pay for it. And therefore, yeah, the government of Ethiopia has to care about it, but also the external donors that these COVID-19 doses and so on should be for free and so on in order to achieve a high share of people that can get the vaccine. Thanks. That makes it clearer. Then I maybe ask Jora about your findings. So you basically find that cash transfer may increase demand for medical care. And something I get wanting to know more about is what's the mechanism behind this? Why do people actually, why are people more likely to seek medical care after such a grant or after they receive some support? So what do you think is, what do we think is happening? It's because people, okay, so some contacts for Brazil, healthcare is free. So people don't need to pay for healthcare. So people who use the public health system here are very poor families. So the data we have so what do you think is happening is that people can't stop working. So now that they receive this cash transfer, they can't stop working to go to the doctor. So they have opportunity for losing a day of work, a day of job is too high for them because they are very poor. So now that they have this cash transfer for the government, now they can, okay, I'm sick.  Right. Yeah, thanks. That makes it easier to understand. Then we have one question from the audience. That's also for Christof. Basically, Raj Kattula is asking about, is the unwillingness to take and pay for vaccine, does that have any relation to social stigma, do you think? Yeah, this is a very good question. I think this could be the case. So what we see is that most of the people in our survey are willing to take COVID-19 vaccine is just like 10%. So said that they are not willing and it could be that these 10% this is due to stigma. It also could be that these numbers that we have in our survey, they are from October, November. So it might be that the willingness to take the COVID-19 vaccine has decreased over time due to the conflict, but also due to the rumors of safety of some of the COVID-19 vaccines. So it might be that this kind of stigma issue has come up until now and it explains some of the reasons why or explains why some of the respondents or some of the people don't want to take the COVID-19 vaccine. Yeah, but it's a good point. Thanks. Then maybe I'll ask one question from Omalola. So basically I was interested you mentioned that SRD grant didn't really reduce hunger at least effectively. I'm simply wondering what's the main explanation behind this. Is it simply the small value of the grants and how could that be made better by for instance a basic income transfer that you recommend? Okay, thank you very much for the question. So for the SRD grants what we saw was that they didn't have much impact in reducing hunger and where we think probably because of the low value of the amount, but at the same time the people that received these SRD grants, the requirements for the receipt of the SRD grants are people that are unemployed. So those people were already worse off at the lower end of the income distribution and so they had higher chances of experiencing hunger compared to the other people in the population and so we see that the SRD grants the value was quite low at 350. So we saw that it did not make much impact but for the other grants we saw that people could receive multiple grants when it came to that like the child support grant and the old expansion. So in households where you have multiple grants, other grants you could have the hunger experiences being reduced compared to also to its just SRD grants. Thank you. Then I actually noticed that there are questions from the audience in the Q&A box. So let's take the questions from Kwabina from you and you wider. He asks for instance, as safety nets are usually targeted on the poorest of the poor, did you examine effects by quintiles or by bars of the income distribution? Okay, so yes. So it's from Valentina. Yeah, that one's for me. Yes, we indeed analyzed the effect of the shock and also the expanded by centiles of the distribution. So that's why we find out our estimate suggests that in average all households across the income distribution are affected, mostly those in the middle of the distribution and that the expanded social assistance was like indeed targeted to the bottom of the distribution and those are the households that benefited the most from the expanded social assistance. Thanks. And then let's go for the question from Nandiki Najak for Omo Lola. So she asks, can Omo Lola tell us more about the profile of the beneficiaries, both SRD and non-SRD and also what's the proportion of population that's getting these transfers? Okay, so for the SRD grants, as I explained earlier, most of it for you to be qualified, the requirement is to be unemployed during the period. So the government wanted to support those that were unemployed and those that lost employment during the ad lockdown, which started in March 2020. So you see that households that applied for this sort of grant had members, most of their members unemployed and they were mostly people at the lower end of the income distribution and so compared to the other grants we saw, the non-SRD grants, we observed that women were more represented in the non-SRD grants than the SRD grants and the SRD grants targeted those that lost employment, which most of them were women, but because they were already getting some other grants, they could not qualify for these SRD grants, which reduced the population of the gender, there was imbalance in the gender receipt of the SRD grants compared to the other grants we had and then we saw that most of the people that received these SRD grants as well were young adults, most of them between the age of 20 and 24, which has the highest unemployment rate in South Africa. As well, we saw people in urban areas, areas like the KwaZulu Natal and Outen, receiving more of these grants than the other provinces in the country. Thanks, Mullala. I think I need to stop you right here because we are actually, it's 11 o'clock finish time exactly now, so I want to thank everybody for the nice presentations, I really enjoyed learning about these different topics and great to see all of you here. I guess good luck with the rest of the conference and I hope you enjoy the rest of the session you decide to go see and if there are any questions or you want to talk more via email, let me know and I guess that's it, so thanks a lot. Thank you.


A little falls man was sent to the hospital over the weekend after crashing after a chase and crashing his motorcycle. According to the Morrison County Sheriff's Office, authorities responded to a dispute at a bar located in Ramey. While in root, deputies learned that the person causing the problem at the bar had left out a motorcycle which Morrison County deputies located and attempted to stop. The motorcycle fled from authorities driving through yards and at one point drove straight at the deputy squad car. The motorcycle then went west on Nature Road at speeds of more than 100 miles per hour. The deputy lost sight of the motorcycle and later found the bike had crashed. 27-year-old Curtis Marshick of Little Falls was ejected off the motorcycle. Marshick was transported to a St. Cloud Hospital with unknown injuries. Alcohol is believed to have been a factor in the incident and the case remains under investigation.