How does exposure to COVID-19 influence health and income inequality aversion?

Miqdad Asaria, Joan Costa-Font and Frank Cowell

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: We study individual aversion to health and income inequality in three European countries (the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy), its determinants and especially, the effects of exposure to three types of COVID-19 specific shocks affecting individuals’ employment status, their income and health. Next, using evidence of representative samples of the population in the UK, we compare levels of health- and income-inequality aversion in the UK between the years 2016 and 2020. We document evidence of a significant increase in inequality aversion in both income and health domains. However, we show that inequality aversion is higher in the income domain than in the health domain. Furthermore, we find that inequality aversion in both domains increases in age and education and decreases in income and risk appetite. However, people directly exposed to major health shocks during the COVID-19 pandemic generally exhibited lower levels of aversion to both income and health inequality. Finally, we show that inequality aversion was significantly higher among those exposed to higher risk of COVID-19 mortality who experienced major health shocks during the pandemic.

Keywords: inequality aversion; income; health; Covid-19; attitudes to inequality; employment shocks; health shocks; difference-in-differences; coronavirus; LSE’s International Inequalities Institute which funded the 2016 survey. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 I30 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2023-10-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-ltv
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Social Choice and Welfare, 1, October, 2023, 61(3), pp. 625 - 647. ISSN: 0176-1714

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/118624/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: How does exposure to COVID-19 influence health and income inequality aversion? (2023)
Working Paper: How Does Exposure to Covid-19 Influence Health and Income Inequality Aversion? (2021)
Working Paper: How Does Exposure to COVID-19 Influence Health and Income Inequality Aversion? (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:118624

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().