Current Research
List viewEconomists from around the world are using real time data collection to better understand the impact the Covid-19 crisis is having on families, workers, firms and society, and how policies can help the recovery out of the crisis. Find out more about how these research teams are carrying out their projects, and what their findings are below.
Identifying and mitigating the impact of Covid-19 on inequalities experienced by people from BAME backgrounds working in health and social care
Prior to Covid-19, the NHS England Workforce Race Equalities Standard (WRES) found that BAME staff experience considerably greater levels of workplace harassment and discrimination, lower pay, less control and poorer working conditions than non-BAME ...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Stephani Hatch
Countries
Social learning about Covid-19 vulnerability and social distancing in high density populations: the case of UK urban dwelling Bangladeshis
Early epidemiology indicates older members of Britain’s Bangladeshi communities are disproportionately affected by Covid-19 related morbidity and mortality. Bangladeshis are more likely to have comorbidities and live in poorer, overcrowded areas in...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Chris Tang
Countries
Addressing inclusivity in the spatial and social impacts of Covid-19 on the self-employed in the UK
The self-employed are a particularly vulnerable group in this current crisis. In contrast to elsewhere, the UK has seen significant growth in self-employment, now reaching 15% of the workforce. They are predominant in those sectors most hit by shutdo...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Darja Reuschke
Countries
Identity, inequality, and the media in Brexit-Covid-19-Britain
Covid-19 and Brexit are extraordinary social and political processes that are occurring simultaneously. These events are exposing the major inequalities that underpin British society across class, ethnic, national, migrant, generational and geographi...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Katharine Tyler
Countries
Covid-19: Families, children aged 0-4 and pregnant women: vulnerabilities, resources and recovery in Tower Hamlets
Adverse impacts of the current Covid-19 pandemic will disproportionately fall on individuals and families at the lower end of the income distribution. The highly diverse population profile offers an opportunity to identify how families deploy their i...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Claire Cameron
Countries
The geography of post Covid-19 shutdown recovery risk in UK economic activity. implications for recovery inequality and targeted stimulus
The Covid-19 shutdown is not affecting all parts of the UK equally. Economic activity in local consumer service industries (LCSI), such as retail outlets, restaurants, hairdressers, or gardeners has all but stopped; other industries are less affected...
Primary Topic: Recession & recovery
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Jesse Matheson
Countries
Understanding Society Covid-19 study
Understanding Society has launched a new monthly survey to look at the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the UK population. This has been funded by ESRC though the study’s discretionary budget and a £200k award from the Health Foundation. The ...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Michaela Benzeval
Countries
The impact of Covid-19 on economic inequality and employment progression
The applicants have already collected novel survey data from a large representative sample of UK workers on 25th March 2020. We find large and significant differences in the impact of the economic disruption across workers of different income levels,...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Abigail Adams-Prassl
Countries
Where does work belong anymore? The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on working in the UK
The Covid-19 outbreak has forced companies to embrace home-based working (HBW) at such speed that they have had little opportunity to consider the impact on their workers. It can be argued that the crisis has led to the most significant, intensive so...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Abigail Marks
Countries
Building resilience during the pandemic: evidence from a cash transfer program in Bolivia
Exploiting the context of a large-scale, untargeted, non- contributory pension program in bolivia, we study the short-term effects of cash transfers on household resilience during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. We compare households that became ...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Nicolas Bottan
Countries
Assessing impacts on and resilience to food insecurity amid the Covid-19 lockdowns in Nigeria
As of the end of May 2020, there have been over 9000 cases and over 260 deaths from Covid-19 in Nigeria and cases have been rising quickly in recent weeks. To prevent the spread of the virus, governments in multiple states have imposed lockdowns. Whi...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Elena M Martinez
Countries
Parental job loss and job insecurity during the Covid-19 pandemic and children’s outcomes
The aim of this research is to study how job loss and felt job insecurity due to the Covid19 pandemic are impacting factors that directly affect the cognitive and non-cognitive achievement of children: parental mental and physical health, income, tim...
Primary Topic: Schools, universities & training
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela
Countries
Income effect in private contribution of public goods: economic impact payment in the Covid-19 pandemic
This paper studies the public good nature of Covid-19 mitigation effort, and illustrates the relationship between income level and the voluntary contribution to the Covid-19 mitigation effort. I build a theoretical model to show that there exists a t...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Ruohao Zhang
Countries
The short- and long-term consequences of Covid-19 on gender equality
The Covid-19 crisis has substantially affected the organisation of work in the labor market and in the household. In particular, with the start of the lock-down, virtually none of the typical components of home production can be outsourced to the mar...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Claudia Hupkau
Countries
The effect of Covid-19 on labor market flows by occupation and gender
For the US and Canada, we compare the Covid-19 effect on gender in terms of labour flows including movements in and out of employment, unemployment and non-participation as well as the allocations across occupations. In particular, we categorize occu...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Audra J. Bowlus
The impact of lockdown on the division of housework and childcare in French households
Before the Covid-19 outbreak, the burden of unpaid work in Europe, e.g. housework and childcare, was mostly carried-out by women - with women spending around 22 hours per week and men only 9 hours per week in unpaid work (European Commission 2019). W...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Anne Boring
Countries
The effects of Covid-19 on the gender gap in academic research productivity
The rapid spread of the new coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic and the subsequent counter-measures, such as school closures, shift to working from home, and social distancing are disrupting economic activity around the world. As with other major economi...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Tatyana Deryugina
Stability of economic preferences in times of crisis
Economic preferences such as risk, time, and social preferences play an important role for a wide range of individual behavior and outcomes as well as aggregated economic variables (e.g. GDP growth, volume of trade between countries). While neoclassi...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Daniel Engler
Countries
How does household spending respond to an epidemic? consumption during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic
We explore how household consumption responds to epidemics, utilizing transaction-level household financial data to investigate the impact of the Covid-19 virus. As the number of cases grew, households began to radically alter their typical spending ...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Scott R. Baker
Countries
Consumer responses to the Covid-19 crisis: evidence from bank account transaction data
This paper uses transaction-level customer data from the largest bank in Denmark to estimate consumer responses to the Covid-19 pandemic and the partial shutdown of the economy. We find that aggregate card spending has dropped sharply by around 25% f...
Primary Topic: Recession & recovery
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Asger Lau Anderson
Countries
