Tracking the impact of COVID-19 on economic inequality at high frequency.

ABSTRACT: Pandemics have historically had a significant impact on economic inequality. However, official inequality statistics are only available at low frequency and with considerable delay, which challenges policymakers in their objective to mitigate inequality and fine-tune public policies. We show that using data from bank records it is possible to measure economic inequality at high frequency. The approach proposed in this paper allows measuring, timely and accurately, the impact on inequality of fast-unfolding crises, like the COVID-19 pandemic. Applying this approach to data from a representative sample of over three million residents of Spain we find that, absent government intervention, inequality would have increased by almost 30% in just one month. The granularity of the data allows analy

SUBMITTER: Aspachs O 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8012053 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature