The Heterogeneous and Regressive Consequences of COVID-19: Evidence from High Quality Panel Data

Abstract

Using new data from the first two waves of the Understanding Society COVID-19 Study collected in April and in May 2020 in the UK, we study the labour market shocks that individuals experienced in the first wave of the pandemic, and the steps they and their households took to cope with those shocks. Understanding Society is based on probability samples and the Covid-19 Study is constructed carefully to support valid population inferences. The Covid-19 Study collected novel data on the mitigation strategies that individuals and households employ. Further, prior observation of respondents in the panel allows us to characterize regressivity with respect to pre-pandemic economic positions. Our key findings are that those with precarious employment, aged under 30 and from minority ethnic groups faced the biggest labour market shocks. Almost 50% of individuals have experienced declines in household earnings of at least 10%, but declines are most severe in the bottom pre-pandemic income quintiles. Methods of mitigation vary substantially across groups: borrowing and transfers from family and friends are most prevalent among those most in need.

The Early Labor Market Impacts of COVID-19 in Developing Countries: Evidence from High-Frequency Phone Surveys

“…Our work contributes to the recent and growing literature examining the labor market impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic around the world. Most analysis of early labor market impacts has focused on high-income countries, including Australia (Guven, Sotirakopoulos and Ulker, 2020), Austria (Bamieh and Ziegler, 2020;Gulyas and Pytka, 2020), Italy (Casarico and Lattanzio, 2020), Canada (Jones, Lange, Riddell and Warman, 2020), Denmark (Mattana, Smeets and Warzynski, 2020), the European Union (Pouliakas and Branka, 2020), Germany (Alipour, Falck and Schu¨ller, 2020), Greece (Betcherman et al, 2020), Israel (Miaari, Sabbah-Karkabi and Loewenthal, 2020), Japan (Kikuchi, Kitao and Mikoshiba, 2020;Morikawa, 2020), the Netherlands (Hassink, Kalb and Meekes, 2020;von Gaudecker et al, 2020a,b), the Republic of Korea (Aum, Lee and Shin, 2020), Singapore (Kim, Koh and Zhang, 2020), Sweden (Hensvik, Barbanchon and Rathelot, 2020a;Juranek, Paetzold, Winner and Zoutman, 2020), the United Kingdom (Costa Dias et al, 2020;Crossley, Fisher and Low, 2021;Etheridge, Tang and Wang, 2020;Wadsworth, 2020), and the United States (Adams-Prassl, Boneva, Golin and Rauh, 2020;Angelucci et al, 2020;Avdiu and Nayyar, 2020;Baek, McCrory, Messer and Mui, 2021;Bartik et al, 2020a,b;Beland, Brodeur and Wright, 2020;Cheng et al, 2020;Chetty et al, 2020;Coibion, Gorodnichenko and Weber, 2020;Cowan, 2020;Dalton, Handwerker and Loewenstein, 2020;Dingel and Neiman, 2020;Forsythe, Kahn, Lange and Wiczer, 2020;Gallant, Kroft, Lange and Notowidigdo...…”

Industry Variation in Risk of Delaying Care During COVID-19

“…These differences could be explained by differing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic across industries on employment and earnings, differences in insurance benefit design generosity, or ability to work from home or access to telehealth from home. 5,6 Future research should examine the specific forms of care that are being disproportionately deferred across industries and ascertain whether they are elective or non-elective procedures.…”

MPCs through COVID: spending, saving and private transfers

“…These weights exploit the rich prior information available from the Main Study on both respondents to the Covid-19 Study and nonrespondents to correct for nonresponse to the Covid-19 Study. Crossley, Fisher, and Low (2020) show that these weights do a very good job of eliminating nonresponse bias, and are superior to the simple calibration weights often available with web surveys.…”

“…Those with children are also much more likely to report paying down debt than those without, as are those who do not own their homes outright or who rent, and those of working age individuals relative to those of retirement age. Crossley, Fisher, and Low (2020) shows that financial assistance between friends and family has been an important mechanism by which people in the UK have coped with financial hardship associated with the pandemic: 15% of households received transfers from friends in the three months after March, and 12% made such transfers. Table 3 shows that 12% of people report that their financial transfers would be affected by the £500 payment, either giving more financial support to family or receiving less.…”