Tracking the impact of COVID-19 on economic inequality at high frequency

Mostra el registre complet Registre parcial de l'ítem

• dc.contributor.author Aspachs, Oriol
• dc.contributor.author Durante, Rubén
• dc.contributor.author Graziano, Alberto
• dc.contributor.author Mestres, Josep Maria, 1959-
• dc.contributor.author Reynal-Querol, Marta
• dc.contributor.author Montalvo, Jose G.
• dc.date.accessioned 2023-06-22T07:26:46Z
• dc.date.available 2023-06-22T07:26:46Z
• dc.date.issued 2021
• dc.description.abstract Pandemics have historically had a significant impact on economic inequality. However, official inequality statistics are only available at low frequency and with considerable delay, which challenges policymakers in their objective to mitigate inequality and fine-tune public policies. We show that using data from bank records it is possible to measure economic inequality at high frequency. The approach proposed in this paper allows measuring, timely and accurately, the impact on inequality of fast-unfolding crises, like the COVID-19 pandemic. Applying this approach to data from a representative sample of over three million residents of Spain we find that, absent government intervention, inequality would have increased by almost 30% in just one month. The granularity of the data allows analyzing with great detail the sources of the increases in inequality. In the Spanish case we find that it is primarily driven by job losses and wage cuts experienced by low-wage earners. Government support, in particular extended unemployment insurance and benefits for furloughed workers, were generally effective at mitigating the increase in inequality, though less so among young people and foreign-born workers. Therefore, our approach provides knowledge on the evolution of inequality at high frequency, the effectiveness of public policies in mitigating the increase of inequality and the subgroups of the population most affected by the changes in inequality. This information is fundamental to fine-tune public policies on the wake of a fast-moving pandemic like the COVID-19.
• dc.description.sponsorship JGM & MRQ: ECO2017-82696P, Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (http://www.ciencia.gob.es/); CEX 2019-000915S Severo Ochoa Program for Centers of Excellence (http://www.ciencia.gob.es/). The Research Department of CaixaBank provided support in the form of salaries for authors OA, AG and, JM. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section. JGM, MRQ and RD acknowledge the financial support of the "Ayudas Fundación BBVA a Equipos de Investigación Científica SARS-CoV-2 y COVID-19.
• dc.format.mimetype application/pdf
• dc.identifier.citation Aspachs O, Durante R, Graziano A, Mestres J, Reynal-Querol M, Montalvo JG. Tracking the impact of COVID-19 on economic inequality at high frequency. PLoS One. 2021;16(3):e0249121. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0249121
• dc.identifier.doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249121
• dc.identifier.issn 1932-6203
• dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10230/57305
• dc.language.iso eng
• dc.publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• dc.relation.ispartof PLoS ONE. 2021;16(3):e0249121.
• dc.relation.projectID info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/2PE/ECO2017-82696P
• dc.relation.projectID info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/2PE/CEX2019-000915-S
• dc.rights © 2021 Aspachs et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
• dc.rights.accessRights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
• dc.rights.uri http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• dc.subject.keyword Salaries
• dc.subject.keyword Pandemics
• dc.subject.keyword COVID 19
• dc.subject.keyword Finance
• dc.subject.keyword Money supply and banking
• dc.subject.keyword Labor economics
• dc.subject.keyword Payment
• dc.subject.keyword Spain
• dc.title Tracking the impact of COVID-19 on economic inequality at high frequency
• dc.type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
• dc.type.version info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion