What is it about?

The coronavirus pandemic led to a severe economic shock in the United States. This paper is the first to estimate multidimensional hardships experienced by Americans early on in the pandemic.

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Why is it important?

We use a multidimensional framework to measure the overlap of hardships experienced by individuals. Our estimates show that 25 percent of the respondents faced hardships in at least two of the four indicators. A higher proportion of Hispanics, and young adults without a college degree suffered multiple hardships during the pandemic.

Perspectives

I believe the most important contribution of this paper is to provide evidence to show how economic disparities deepened along racial/ethnic lines during the pandemic. There was anecdotal evidence in news outlets about how the pandemic affected minority groups to a greater extent. This paper provides one of the earliest quantitative evidence and shows that nearly 40% of Hispanics suffered from multiple hardships.

Shatakshee Dhongde
Georgia Institute of Technology

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This page is a summary of: Multidimensional economic deprivation during the coronavirus pandemic: Early evidence from the United States, PLoS ONE, December 2020, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0244130.
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