Assessing policy to address the medium-run impact of COVID-19 on income and health inequality with models informed by the history of disease outbreaks

本研究旨在评估COVID-19对收入和健康不平等的中期影响，以及旨在减轻这些影响的可能政策。中期非常重要，因为COVID-19对不平等的影响预计将持续多年。要了解不平等在中期内如何变化，并评估短期内的缓解政策，就需要了解疫情爆发后几年收入和健康不平等的演变情况。为了实现这一目标，我们将把通常应用于现代数据集的联合收割机模型与历史时期的定量数据结合起来，这些数据与当代数据不同，涵盖了疫情爆发后的长期数据。我们将使用世纪末以来格拉斯哥的记录，涵盖了一个经济活动激烈和波动的时期，以及多种疾病的爆发。我们选择格拉斯哥，因为它是一个大城市，表现出与今天类似的不平等，因为格拉斯哥的行政记录提供了详细的相关信息。我们将使用一个已被证明能有效捕捉收入不平等和经济衰退对这种不平等的影响的建模框架。我们将扩展建模方法，以包括健康不平等，并确保收入和健康不平等都使用最近的数据集准确地表示。为了建立模型，以便捕捉疫情对不平等的影响，我们将使用早期的历史数据，包括大规模疾病爆发。然后，该模型将使我们能够检查不同的政策干预对具有不同社会经济特征的家庭的影响。

This research aims to assess the medium-run implications of COVID-19 on income and health inequality, and possible policies that aim to mitigate these effects. The medium run is important because the impacts of COVID-19 on inequality are expected to persist for many years. Understanding how inequality changes over the medium run, and assessing mitigation policies beyond the short term, requires information on the evolution of income and health inequalities several years after an outbreak. To achieve this, we will combine models typically applied to modern datasets with quantitative data from historical periods that, unlike contemporary data, cover extended post-outbreak periods. We will use records from Glasgow since the end of the 19th century, covering a period of intense and volatile economic activity, as well as multiple disease outbreaks. We choose Glasgow because it is a large city demonstrating similar inequalities to those seen today, and because administrative records for Glasgow provide detailed relevant information.Our approach is the following. We will use a modelling framework that has been shown to be effective in capturing income inequality and the effects of recessions on this inequality. We will extend the modelling approach to also include health inequalities and ensure that both income and health inequalities are represented accurately using recent datasets. To set up the model so that it captures the effects of outbreaks on inequalities, we will use historical data from earlier times that include large disease outbreaks. The model will then allow us to examine the effects of different policy interventions for households with different socioeconomic characteristics.