Planning for Pandemics: Income Support and Job Retention Schemes in G7 Countries and Evolution of Economic and Health Inequality
- Project status
- Ongoing
- Departments
- International
The Covid-19 pandemic was an unprecedented event for which there was no treatment for the infection. Most G7 countries mandated lockdowns (Japan is somewhat an exception) as a method to control infections. As individuals were not allowed to go out or to work in many sectors, there was a possibility of income collapse and extensive lay-offs. Most of the G7 countries introduced income support and job retention programmes where the government subsidised pay at qualifying firms to prevent layoffs to counter this. This project will do a comparative analysis of these schemes which differ in their design and analyse their economic consequences. A concern of policymakers is how economic (income and wealth) and health inequality due to the pandemic. The project will analyse how these inequalities change due to the pandemic taking wealth, spatial, and demographic heterogeneity into account. This will help design resilient responses to future pandemics.
Research team: Professor Aditya Goenka, University of Birmingham; Professor Christoph Görtz, University of Birmingham