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Current Research

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Economists from around the world are using real time data collection to better understand the impact the Covid-19 crisis is having on families, workers, firms and society, and how policies can help the recovery out of the crisis. Find out more about how these research teams are carrying out their projects, and what their findings are below.

Gemini Covid-19 study: immediate and longer-term impacts on the health, behaviour and wellbeing of U.K. families

The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on U.K. families goes far beyond the devastating health implications of the virus itself. Added family stresses, including income loss, excessive confinement, social isolation and anxieties about health and educati...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Alison Fildes
Countries

Carrying the work burden of the Covid-19 pandemic: working class women in the UK

Working class women are carrying the burden of the extra physical and emotional labour being generated by the Covid-19 pandemic. These women care for children, sick and frail elderly, clean buildings, cook and serve food, administer institutions and ...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Tracey Warren
Countries

Centre for longitudinal studies

A nationwide survey of the participants of five national longitudinal cohort studies, to examine the impact of the pandemic, help understand how people at different life stages are affected, and how prior life experiences shape resilience or vulnerab...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Alissa Goodman
Countries

Covid-19: Families, children aged 0-4 and pregnant women: vulnerabilities, resources and recovery in Tower Hamlets

Adverse impacts of the current Covid-19 pandemic will disproportionately fall on individuals and families at the lower end of the income distribution. The highly diverse population profile offers an opportunity to identify how families deploy their i...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Claire Cameron
Countries

Supporting fiscal policy decisions in the crisis

We are going through an economic crisis. The government has responded with an unprecedented policy package, costing many tens of billions of pounds over just a few months – paying for employees to be furloughed, making payments to the self-employed...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Recession & recovery
Lead investigator: Paul Johnson
Countries

Tracking the Covid-19 crisis with high-resolution transaction data

Financial and payments systems throughout the world generate a vast amount of naturally occurring, and digitally recorded, transaction data, but national statistical agencies mainly rely on surveys of much smaller scale for constructing official econ...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Vasco M. Carvalho
Countries

Impacts of Covid-19 on rural households in Bangladesh

The Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI) is conducting a survey of rural households in Bangladesh to better understand Covid-19’s impacts on vulnerable people and guide the development of policy responses that improve social protection. This pho...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Lead investigator: Peter Morgan
Countries

The Covid-19 pandemic and working parents: evidence from Brisith longitudinal data

We document the difficulties faced by working parents during the Covid-19 pandemic, and in particular the increased financial insecurity and worsening mental health due to conflicting family and work needs. We analyse the heterogeneous effects of the...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Zhiming Cheng
Countries

Tracking the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on the lives of American households

Since March 10, 2020, we have been tracking effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on respondents to the nationally representative Understanding America Study (UAS). After an initial survey that covered March 10-31 March 2020, we launched tracking surveys ...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Arie Kapteyn
Countries

Income effect in private contribution of public goods: economic impact payment in the Covid-19 pandemic

This paper studies the public good nature of Covid-19 mitigation effort, and illustrates the relationship between income level and the voluntary contribution to the Covid-19 mitigation effort. I build a theoretical model to show that there exists a t...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Ruohao Zhang
Countries

The impact of Covid-19 on work and time-use in the family

This project analyses the impact of the severe contention measures and stay-home orders resulting from the Covid-19 outbreak on the work and time-use of families in Spain. Between March 14 and May 2, 2020, the country suffered the strictest lockdown ...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Lead investigator: Lídia Farré
Countries

The short- and long-term consequences of Covid-19 on gender equality

The Covid-19 crisis has substantially affected the organisation of work in the labor market and in the household. In particular, with the start of the lock-down, virtually none of the typical components of home production can be outsourced to the mar...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Claudia Hupkau
Countries

The impact of lockdown on the division of housework and childcare in French households

Before the Covid-19 outbreak, the burden of unpaid work in Europe, e.g. housework and childcare, was mostly carried-out by women - with women spending around 22 hours per week and men only 9 hours per week in unpaid work (European Commission 2019). W...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Anne Boring
Countries

The effects of Covid-19 on the gender gap in academic research productivity

The rapid spread of the new coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic and the subsequent counter-measures, such as school closures, shift to working from home, and social distancing are disrupting economic activity around the world. As with other major economi...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Tatyana Deryugina

The impact of Covid-19 on violence against women and children in Germany

To contain the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, nearly a quarter of the world’s population is currently under lockdown or practicing physical distancing. These measures may have inadvertent consequences. In this project, we study the implications o...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Health, physical & mental
Lead investigator: Cara Ebert
Countries

How does household spending respond to an epidemic? consumption during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic

We explore how household consumption responds to epidemics, utilizing transaction-level household financial data to investigate the impact of the Covid-19 virus. As the number of cases grew, households began to radically alter their typical spending ...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Scott R. Baker
Countries

Food and nutrition security in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia during Covid‑19 pandemic

On March 13th, the first Covid-19 case was confirmed in Ethiopia. Three days later, the government closed schools, banned all public gatherings and sporting activities, and recommended social distancing. Other measures to contain the spread of the vi...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Kalle Hirvonen
Countries

The impact of Covid-19 on paid and unpaid work in the family: an international comparison

The Covid-19 pandemic has led governments worldwide to lock down their counties for several weeks. With the aim to curb the spread of the virus, most people have had to stay at home, working from their dwelling, and schools are closed. The quarantine...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Lídia Farré

Heterogeneous consumption and income responses during the Covid-19 crisis

This project aims to examine the distributional consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic using the Singapore Life Panel (SLP), a unique monthly panel dataset which contains detailed information on income, consumption and wealth for a representative samp...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Jing Li
Countries

The impact of Covid-19 on food and nutrition security in Bangladesh

The Coronavirus disease (Covid-19) has created a major health and economic crisis globally. As of April 11th, there were almost 1.7 million confirmed cases and more than 100,000 reported deaths due to the virus. The first Covid-19 case was confirmed ...
Primary Topic: Families & households
Secondary Topic: Inequality & poverty
Lead investigator: Akhter Ahmed
Countries