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.
Monitoring socioeconomic and mental health trajectories through the Covid-19 pandemic
This study will use the nationally representative data collected monthly by the UKHLS COVID panel to assess the pandemic’s ongoing impact on individuals’ mental health and financial situation, and how this differs among subgroups of the UK popula...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Neil R Smith
Countries
Gendering the UK's social policy response to the Covid-19 crisis
The Covid-19 outbreak and resultant economic crisis has led to governments around the world, including the UK, taking extraordinary action to support citizens facing unprecedented shocks to their livelihoods. Bodies such as the International Labour O...
Primary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Rose Cook
Countries
Responding to the Covid-19 domestic abuse crisis: developing a rapid police evidence base
The proposed project provides a near real-time evidence base to inform the police approach to the apparent surge in domestic violence and abuse (DA) triggered by the Covid-19 lockdown in the UK. Police case file data from seven diverse police forces ...
Primary Topic: Crime & policing
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Katrin Hohl
Countries
Covid-19: safety and personalisation for UK maternity care provision during and after a pandemic.
Annually, over 1,200,000 UK residents (pregnant women and neonates) need maternity care. All relevant authorities emphasise the critical importance of antenatal, intrapartum, postnatal and neonatal services, birth companionship, keeping mother/baby t...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Soo Downe
Countries
Covid-19: supporting parents, adolescents and children during epidemics (Co-SPACE)
Covid-19 and the related public health measures have led to major disruptions to families’ lives, with different pressures arising for children, young people and their families over time. There is some indication from research during epidemics in o...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Polly Waite
English longitudinal study of ageing Covid-19 substudy
The Covid-19 crisis is having an unprecedented impact on people's lives from the perspectives of their health, psychological wellbeing, social activity, employment and financial circumstances. Older people are at high risk because of the presenc...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Andrew Steptoe
Countries
Agreements must be kept? Residential leases during Covid-19
This paper studies how a Covid-19 lockdown affected residential lease payments. Survey data on 1511 Israeli renter households show nearly one in eight households not paying full rent during the lockdown, with these households holding back, on average...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Itai Ater
Countries
Helping families help themselves during stay-at-home orders: effects of a mobile phone intervention to address child maltreatment and violent parent-child Interactions
Lockdown measures imposed throughout the world to contain the spread of the Covid-19 have drastically changed household dynamics. The stay-at-home orders, together with the temporary closure of schools and the change to virtual education schemes, hav...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Sofia Amaral
Countries
Corona, lockdown, local GDP and Individual well-being: a comparison of regions in New Zealand with machine learning forecasts
We study the impact of local economic prospects on the well-being of individuals in reaction to the Corona lockdown and thereafter. We expect that well-being is positively affected by the economic outlook in the local region, as approximated via AI-b...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Nora Szech
Countries
Habit formation from corona lockdown
To prevent the spread of Covid-19, many countries have implemented different degrees of lockdowns, which has profoundly changed the way people live their lives. In our study, we investigate how habits change during and after the Corona lockdowns. We ...
Primary Topic: Attitudes, media & governance
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Nora Szech
The unequal effects of Covid-19 on economists' research productivity
The current lock-down measures are expected to disproportionately reduce women’s labor productivity in the short run. This paper analyzes the effects of these measures on economists' research productivity. We explore the patterns of working pa...
Primary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Noriko Amano-Patino
Managing the Covid-19 pandemic in poor urban neighbourhoods: the case of Ghana and South Africa
The novel Coronavirus, Covid-19, and measures to combat it are expected to have a significant impact on the physical and mental well being of all people, but especially those living in poor urban neighbourhoods. We are conducting a panel phone survey...
Primary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Isabel Gunther
Countries
Labor market outcomes and time use during the Coronavirus outbreak
This project will study labor market outcomes and time use by US households during the 2020 Coronavirus outbreak. We are particularly interested in the effect of the outbreak on three interrelated areas. First, how did the outbreak impact labor marke...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Alexander Bick
Countries
Migration and the labor market impacts of Covid-19
Labor migration is a fundamental component of household income for a large number of households in many parts of the world, especially in poorer and more rural areas. Migrant households are hardest hit by Covid-19 mitigation policies as social distan...
Primary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Nathan Barker
Countries
Economic determinants of violence in the home: the case of Sweden during Covid-19
Violence within the home is the most common form of interpersonal violence for women. While children and men are also victims of abuse of various kind within the family, intimate partner violence (IPV) committed by men against women is generally the ...
Primary Topic: Crime & policing
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Maria Perrota
Countries
Social connections with Covid-19-affected areas increase compliance with mobility restrictions
We study the role of social connections in households’ responses to mobility restrictions imposed amid the Covid-19 epidemic, using aggregated and anonymized Facebook data on social connections and mobile phone data for tracking movement. Measured ...
Primary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Ben Charoenwong
Countries
Life in social isolation
The global pandemic of Covid19 has forced many people around the world to suddenly live in social isolation. The consequences of mass-scale social isolation on individuals’ mental health and wellbeing are still unknown. In this project, we study th...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Marina Della Giusta
Covid-19, stay-at-home orders and well-being: evidence from Google trends
We investigate the impact of the government response to Covid-19 on health and well-being using Google Trends Data. More precisely, we aim to test the impact of stay-at home orders on 12 Google Trends topics related to health and well-being in the US...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Abel Brodeur
Do cash transfers help sustain economic and psychological well-being in times of crisis – experimental evidence from Uganda
We evaluate the impact of cash grants offered to a random sample of rural households in Uganda on their economic and psychological well-being during the COVID19 crisis. The cash grants were provided shortly before the Government of Uganda ordered a n...
Primary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Kjetil Bjorvatn
Countries
Hang up on stereotypes: domestic violence and anti-abuse helpline campaign
We estimate the consequences of a government-led anti-domestic-abuse campaign launched in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic on the number of calls to the italian domestic violence helpline. In the week after the start of the campaign, we document a ...
Primary Topic: Crime & policing
Secondary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Marco Colagrossi
Countries
