Income and Poverty in the COVID-19 Pandemic
Income and Poverty in the COVID-19 Pandemic
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DOI：
10.1353/eca.2020.0007
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发表时间：
2020-06-01
影响因子：
5.9
通讯作者：
Sullivan, James X.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Han, Jeehoon;Meyer, Bruce D.;Sullivan, James X.
本文通过提供有关当前大流行对收入和贫困的影响的及时、准确的信息，讨论了 COVID-19 大流行的经济影响，以便为向受影响最严重的群体提供资源提供信息，并评估当前努力的成功程度。我们使用基本月度当前人口调查（CPS）的高频数据构建了仅滞后几周的收入分配和贫困的新衡量标准，该调查收集了大量具有代表性的美国家庭样本的收入信息。由于该项目的家庭收入数据很少使用，因此我们通过将依赖这些数据的历史估计与更广泛使用的收入和消费数据的估计进行比较，验证了这种及时的收入衡量标准。我们的研究结果表明，在大流行开始时，政府政策有效地抵消了其对收入的影响，导致一系列人口群体和地区的贫困率下降，低百分位收入上升。依赖于详细的 CPS 数据且与政府支付总额密切匹配的模拟表明，我们发现的贫困人口整体下降可以归因于政府援助的增加，包括失业保险福利和经济影响付款。我们的模拟进一步表明，在失业者中，绝大多数人都获得了失业保险，尽管在大流行初期情况并非如此，而且各州的领取情况也不均衡，一些州没有覆盖到很大一部分失业居民。本文中部分表格在大流行期间的更新结果可以在贫困测量网站找到。
This paper addresses the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic by providing timely and accurate information on the impact of the current pandemic on income and poverty to inform the targeting of resources to those most affected and assess the success of current efforts. We construct new measures of the income distribution and poverty with a lag of only a few weeks using high-frequency data from the Basic Monthly Current Population Survey (CPS), which collects income information for a large, representative sample of US families. Because the family income data for this project are rarely used, we validate this timely measure of income by comparing historical estimates that rely on these data to estimates from data on income and consumption that have been used much more broadly. Our results indicate that at the start of the pandemic, government policy effectively countered its effects on incomes, leading poverty to fall and low percentiles of income to rise across a range of demographic groups and geographies. Simulations that rely on the detailed CPS data and that closely match total government payments made show that the entire decline in poverty that we find can be accounted for by the rise in government assistance, including unemployment insurance benefits and the Economic Impact Payments. Our simulations further indicate that of those losing employment the vast majority received unemployment insurance,though this was less true early on in the pandemic, and receipt was uneven across the states, with some states not reaching a large share of their out of work residents. Updated results during the pandemic for a subset of the tables in this article can be found at povertymeasurement.org.