Covid-19: how the crisis has worsened social inequalities

The Cov­id pan­dem­ic is a per­fect example of the boom­er­ang effect caused by crises: if we do not come to the aid of a per­son in eco­nom­ic, social or psy­cho­lo­gic­al dif­fi­culty, we expose ourselves to widen­ing social fractures.

Inequal­it­ies have worsened and the inter­de­pend­ency¹ between types of inequal­it­ies have increased. In the United States, for example, Afric­an-Amer­ic­ans – overrep­res­en­ted in the most dis­ad­vant­aged cat­egor­ies – suffered 23% of fatal Cov­id cases, des­pite mak­ing up only 13% of the population.

Gender par­ity on the decline. As a McKin­sey study² points out, women are par­tic­u­larly sens­it­ive to pres­sure from employ­ers, which is reflec­ted in a mul­ti­tude of signs, such as the encour­age­ment to always show a ‘green light’ on their com­puters. In some cases, Cov­id forced them to spend more than three extra hours a day on their chil­dren and house­hold chores: on aver­age this was one and a half times more com­mon than for men. Women of col­our are dis­pro­por­tion­ately affected: black moth­ers are twice as likely as white women to do all the house­work and childcare.

Inequal­it­ies have also come to light dur­ing the recov­ery peri­od. By Feb­ru­ary 2021, the employ­ment rate for the highest paid employ­ees had ris­en above its Feb­ru­ary 2020 level, while for the low­est paid it was 12% lower. In some sec­tors, unem­ploy­ment is likely to be high for a long time, which could intensi­fy the exist­ing inequal­ity of access to employ­ment between per­man­ent con­tracts and civil ser­vants on the one hand, and all oth­er types of con­tracts on the oth­er. Hence the import­ance of effect­ive social insur­ance, and in par­tic­u­lar the safety net that a uni­ver­sal income would provide.

This is all the more import­ant because his­tor­ic­ally dis­asters, whatever their nature, hit the poorest the hard­est – those who have no plan B. Child­care is anoth­er area of inequal­ity: while it is not neces­sary while par­ents work from home, it can cause insur­mount­able dilem­mas for low-income work­ers already over­ex­posed to the vir­us in the work­place. Tra­gic­ally, the inab­il­ity of a single moth­er to provide child­care can lead to the loss of her job and a down­ward spiral.

Has poverty increased? An offi­cial French report shows that 12% of the people who vis­ited food banks between Septem­ber and Novem­ber 2020 were new pro­files. The main reas­ons for using food banks are job loss, ill­ness, and sep­ar­a­tion, all of which have been affected by the pandemic.

But lock­down has also intro­duced new types of inequal­it­ies, which may over­lap with and exacer­bate exist­ing inequal­it­ies. Firstly, is the dif­fer­ence in health secur­ity between those who are able to remote work and those whose com­puls­ory pres­ence in the work­place leaves them more exposed to the vir­us. Accord­ing to INSEE, at the end of March 2020, one third of employ­ees in France were work­ing at their work­place, one third were remote work­ing and one third were furloughed.

As core work­ers are often low-paid employ­ees, this is a double whammy – for example, the Eng­lish core work­er earns 8% less than the aver­age wage in the UK as a whole. Neigh­bour­hoods where these work­ers live exper­i­enced high­er mor­tal­ity rates from Cov­id than the rest of the pop­u­la­tion. In Toronto it was twice as high as in more priv­ileged neigh­bour­hoods. And cer­tain socio-pro­fes­sion­al cat­egor­ies were par­tic­u­larly decim­ated: bakers in Cali­for­nia saw their mor­tal­ity soar by more than 50% by the end of 2020.

Anoth­er inequal­ity is the weak enforce­ment of con­fine­ment rules in cer­tain areas, which are already exposed to a lack of gov­ern­ment­al powers and often eco­nom­ic­ally dis­ad­vant­aged. Liv­ing in cramped flats that are unsuit­able for tele­work­ing or exer­cise tests the lim­its of many families.

Dur­ing the coronavir­us crisis, lack of inter­net access can cre­ate bar­ri­ers that are dif­fi­cult to over­come for many house­holds. In the US, an estim­ated one-third of the pop­u­la­tion has no access to the inter­net bey­ond mobile phone use, and an offi­cial report by the Nation­al Asso­ci­ation of Counties found that 65% of US counties do not offer broad­band and 50% do not even have the min­im­um leg­al speed. There is also illit­er­acy, which affects one in six people in France, accord­ing to INSEE, with 38% of users lack­ing at least one basic digit­al skill.

Fur­ther­more, this digit­al insec­ur­ity is strongly cor­rel­ated with most of the tra­di­tion­al inequal­it­ies. The UN has made digit­al access a fun­da­ment­al right, but much remains to be done to ensure true digit­al equal­ity. This includes increas­ing net­work cov­er­age, facil­it­at­ing learn­ing and reg­u­lat­ing pricing.

For chil­dren and young people, these inequal­it­ies, which are com­poun­ded and exacer­bated, can have a struc­tur­ing effect in the long term. This is a major issue, which should not be underestimated.

Without the Inter­net, it is almost impossible to con­tin­ue one’s edu­ca­tion, and even low-speed access makes it very dif­fi­cult to fol­low courses. On the oth­er hand, only fam­il­ies where the par­ents have a high level of edu­ca­tion (often the most afflu­ent) can sup­port their chil­dren’s school­work. Con­fine­ment there­fore led to a high­er degree of social repro­duc­tion, with wor­ry­ing increase inn school dropouts.

How­ever, even the most highly edu­cated stu­dents are still at risk. In France, a joint sur­vey by the Con­férence des grandes écoles, BCG and Ipsos cov­er­ing 138 “grandes écoles” and more than 2,000 stu­dents shows that almost two thirds of stu­dents are con­vinced that they have dropped out and think they will have to make do with a job that falls short of their expect­a­tions. 71% have “the feel­ing of belong­ing to a gen­er­a­tion sac­ri­ficed in the name of health secur­ity”. For 83% of them, the qual­ity of their train­ing has been affected by the crisis. Hence, cov­id has had an impact even on the elite.