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. 2022 Apr 14;20(4):811–839. doi: 10.1007/s10888-022-09540-y

Will COVID-19 Have Long-Lasting Effects on Inequality? Evidence from Past Pandemics

Davide Furceri 1,2,✉, Prakash Loungani 1,3, Jonathan D Ostry 4, Pietro Pizzuto 2
PMCID: PMC9007730  PMID: 35437431

Abstract

This paper provides evidence on the impact of major epidemics from the past two decades on income distribution. The pandemics in our sample, even though much smaller in scale than COVID-19, have led to increases in the Gini coefficient, raised the income share of higher-income deciles, and lowered the employment-to-population ratio for those with basic education compared to those with higher education. We provide some evidence that the distributional consequences from the current pandemic may be larger than those flowing from the historical pandemics in our sample, and larger than those following typical recessions and financial crises.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10888-022-09540-y.

Keywords: COVID-19, Pandemics, Inequality

Supplementary Information

ESM 1 (96.6KB, docx)

(DOCX 96 kb)

Acknowledgements

The authors did not receive support from any organization for the submitted work.

Funding

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

Declarations

Competing Interests

The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.

Footnotes

The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or its member countries. A previous draft of the paper was published in Covid Economics with the title “Will COVID-19 Affect Inequality? Evidence from Past Pandemics”.

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Contributor Information

Davide Furceri, Email: dfurceri@imf.org.

Prakash Loungani, Email: ploungani@imf.org.

Jonathan D. Ostry, Email: jostry@imf.org

Pietro Pizzuto, Email: pietro.pizzuto02@unipa.it.

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(DOCX 96 kb)

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