RSF: The Socioeconomic Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic
About This Book
The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare stark structural inequalities along the lines of race and ethnicity, gender, and class in the United States. Federal, state, and local governments responded with policies to help mitigate the potential devastation with varying success. In this issue of RSF, co-published with The JPB Foundation, public policy scholar Steven Raphael, sociologist Daniel Schneider, and an interdisciplinary group of contributors examine the effectiveness of government response on the socioeconomic consequences of the pandemic.
The 11 articles in this issue examine the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and federal and local responses to the crisis on social safety net usage, unemployment insurance (UI), parenting and gender disparities, housing, and experiences with the criminal justice system. Marianne P. Bitler and colleagues find that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) pandemic benefit increases were less generous to Black recipients. This was because Black recipients were more likely than other groups to have received the maximum benefit amount prior to the pandemic and the emergency allotment policy increased payments to the maximum amount for many recipients but provided no additional increase to those already receiving the maximum. Alex Bell and colleagues show that states with more liberal UI policies, such as higher weekly benefit amounts, saw higher rates of UI access during the pandemic, suggesting that policy played an important role in driving disparities in U.S. access across states. Liana Christin Landivar and colleagues reveal that remote schooling led to reduced employment among mothers compared to fathers and women without children, with Black mothers experiencing the largest reduction in employment. Vincent J. Reina and Yeonhwa Lee find that low-income renters who received emergency rental assistance during the pandemic had lower arrears, a lower likelihood of having rent-related debt, and a lower likelihood of experiencing debilitating anxiety. Samantha Plummer and colleagues show that individuals leaving jail or who had criminal cases during the early phase of the pandemic suffered high levels of housing and food insecurity as well as joblessness, but those with mental illness and substance abuse problems experienced the highest levels of material hardship.
This issue of RSF sheds light on how the pandemic and the cor-responding government response have both reinforced and reshaped socioeconomic inequality in the United States.