Inequality in Life and Death
- Resource Type
- Authors
- Mathias Trabandt; Martin Eichenbaum; Sergio Rebelo
- Source
- IMF Economic Review
- Subject
- Inequality
business.industry
media_common.quotation_subject
Risk of infection
Epidemic
Recession
General Business, Management and Accounting
E1
Economic inequality
I1
H0
Health care
Economics
Demographic economics
Quality (business)
business
Construct (philosophy)
General Economics, Econometrics and Finance
Capital market
media_common
Research Article
- Language
- English
- ISSN
- 2041-417X
2041-4161
We argue that the COVID epidemic disproportionately affected the economic well-being and health of poor people. To disentangle the forces that generated this outcome, we construct a model that is consistent with the heterogeneous impact of the COVID recession on low- and high-income people. According to our model, two-thirds of the inequality in COVID deaths reflect preexisting inequality in comorbidity rates and access to quality health care. The remaining third stems from the fact that low-income people work in occupations where the risk of infection is high. Our model also implies that the rise in income inequality generated by the COVID epidemic reflects the nature of the goods that low-income people produce. Finally, we assess the health–income trade-offs associated with fiscal transfers to the poor and mandatory containment policies.