Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to determine the impact of private and public initiatives (financial literacy, entrepreneurship, remote work and government aid) on individual job loss and decrease in income during the COVID-19 pandemic in Peru. Design/methodology/approach: The authors used an unbalanced panel data analysis with the National Household Survey for 2019–2020. The hypotheses are tested with a probit panel data model since the dependent variables are binary. Findings: The study findings indicate that financial preparedness reduced the probability of having a decrease in income, but only to informal workers in metropolitan Lima. Furthermore, entrepreneurship helped mainly female informal workers to reduce their probability of becoming unemployed in metropolitan Lima. Besides, the implementation of remote work as a substitute of face-to-face work was not enough to avoid ...

Purpose: Our findings indicate that workers with more financial education were more prepared to face the negative effects on their finances from COVID. This ability reduces the probability of becoming financially fragile and experiencing financial stress. Design/methodology/approach: The authors applied a survey questionnaire to 856 Colombian adults and used principal component analysis to build an index for each factor. Then, the authors used a linear regression model with the indexes to test our hypotheses and verify our results using a structural equation model. Findings: Our findings indicate that workers who have more financial education are more prepared to face the negative effects on their finances, which reduces the probability of becoming financially fragile and having financial stress. Research limitations/implications: The authors found that there is no significant relationsh...