COVID-19 began spreading at the end of 2019. Our posts cover the ensuing drop in employment; differential impacts on workers by income, race, ethnicity, gender, education, and parental status; unemployment insurance and other social supports to assist those impacted; the mounting red ink on federal and state budgets; and ramifications in areas ranging from developing countries, to education, the environment, and beyond.
May 13, 2021
UI benefits during COVID increased at times to levels well in excess of workers’ earnings and at other times dropped drastically without regard to labor market conditions.
May 10, 2021
Food insecurity and hunger remain elevated for years following an economic downturn. Modest changes could improve the reach of existing government programs.
May 6, 2021
Frequent, unexpected disruptions in the care and schooling of children have significantly contributed to the daily burden for families during the pandemic.
April 19, 2021
Tom Frieden (former Director, CDC) and Michael Klein discuss factors that make COVID-19 particularly deadly, and the importance of good governance in slowing its spread, as well as other issues.
April 14, 2021
Higher education student enrollment declined with the pandemic, particularly for new college students. The size of the impact varied across institution types.
March 30, 2021
The onset of the pandemic in the U.S. in 2020 had a massive impact on crime, with large drops in almost all types of crime except for homicides and shootings.
March 7, 2021
COVID screening at work is now routine. Yet little is known about its impact and whether it could lead to disparate effects by age, race, ethnicity, or gender.
March 5, 2021
As COVID-19 plunges the US economy into a recession, we look at the reasons this crisis has disproportionately affected women.
January 12, 2021
Michael Kremer (U Chicago. 2019 co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics) joins Michael Klein to discuss the economics of vaccine development and deployment.