How Is the Coronavirus Pandemic Impacting Human Inequality?

It is clear that the coronaviruspandemic is having a widespread impact on people’s economic security as well as on their physical and mental health. In this video, HANS-MARTIN VON GAUDECKER considers how the crisis is affecting human inequality. Is the pandemic making the disadvantaged even worse off or is it a “great equalizer”? Von Gaudecker’s data comes from an online panel with 7000 individuals based in the Netherlands and standard regression is employed to analyze the information. The research suggests that the crisis has had most marked effects on those workers who are neither categorized as essential nor who can feasibly work from home. It also highlights the importance of keeping schools and child day care centers open in order to minimize inequality. Looking forward, focusing on potentially changing roles in child care enabled by home working, the project is seeking to identify whether the pandemic is having positive or negative effects on gender inequality.