How did the COVID-19 “inequality virus” impact inequality? Pandemics and policy

Todd A. Knoop

Chapter 6 in Understanding Economic Inequality, 2025, pp 171-189 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The interaction between the COVID-19 pandemic and economic inequality is examined in this chapter. History shows us that understanding how pandemics impact labor market inequalities and institutions is key to understanding their impact on economic inequality—an insight made by Plato more than 2,400 years ago when he said: “inequality is the greatest of all plagues”. COVID-19 increased inequality because it particularly disadvantaged the poorest workers who were neither able to do their jobs virtually nor via telework. However, the pandemic assistance programs adopted by governments in rich countries eventually led to the biggest declines in income inequality (although temporary) in more than 50 years. In the long term, the pandemic may have set the conditions for worsening inequality through its impact on public health, but also the impact it had on labor scarring, education, and institutions. In the end, the most reliable data point from the pandemic research thus far is that countries that already had higher levels of inequality before the pandemic had worse public health outcomes, meaning that a vicious cycle exists between the health costs of pandemics and inequality.

Keywords: Pandemics and economic inequality; Public health; Telework; Pandemic assistance programs; Inequality is the greatest of all plagues; Labor scarring (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035360116
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