As COVID-19 rages through the United States, news coverage has focused on the immediate consequences of the pandemic. Networks have been saturated with articles about the need for ventilators, daily new case counts, and comparative descriptions of how — and how well — different countries around the world have handled the crisis. Individual profiles show the gut-wrenching toll that COVID-19 can take on families.
Missing from public discourse has been a thoughtful and research-based discussion of how COVID-19 will affect the United States — and the world — over the long term, particularly with respect to inequality. Even before COVID-19, inequality in the United States was at its highest level in recent history; some historians had even declared we were entering a “Second Gilded Age.” Now, according to three Harvard faculty, COVID-19 is likely to exacerbate existing inequality trends far into the future, especially in education, gender, and international development.
Educational Inequality
First, COVID-19 has widened an existing rift in educational inequality. As David Deming, director of the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, told the HPR, “students from families with means are in a better position to bridge the transition to remote learning.” These students’ parents, Deming explained, are more likely to be knowledge workers with more autonomy, who can stay at home and help their children navigate the challenges brought on by COVID-19. Meanwhile, students from underprivileged backgrounds are more likely to have parents whose jobs are not as flexible; in many cases, these parents cannot work from home and cannot help their kids navigate the educational challenges added by COVID-19. As a result, well-to-do students have a buffer that will only increase their relative advantage to their peers.
Deming also highlighted the role of federalism in addressing educational inequalities. Due to COVID-19, states have had to rework their budgets, simultaneously dealing with increased medical spending (states have had to spend millions of dollars on ventilators, masks, and other medical equipment), as well as lower sales and income tax revenues due to unprecedented unemployment. However, unlike the federal government, which can run a deficit, states are barred from doing so due to balanced budget amendments. While the coronavirus relief bill, which was signed into law in March 2020, has provided some extra money to states, the amount has not nearly been enough to compensate for the shortfall, meaning states will likely have to plug enormous budget holes on their own. Deming warned that since education is often the largest discretionary item in state budgets, it will likely get cut first, leaving public institutions with large classes taught by less-qualified instructors and little in the way of counseling, mentoring, and other core services — consequences that may inhibit equal access to quality education for years to come.
Looking forward, Deming calls upon the federal government to help states meet their educational obligations, specifically through a federal matching grant in which the federal government would match states’ educational expenses dollar-for-dollar. Similar to arrangements that have successfully boosted Medicaid spending, a federal matching grant could help states maintain and potentially increase levels of educational funding. Furthermore, states must think creatively about ways to return students to the classroom. Denmark serves as a potential model, where schools have enforced new rules to keep students safely distanced. Students are divided into groups that arrive at school at separate times, eat their lunches separately, stay in their own zones in the playground, and are taught by separate teachers. Granted, there is still a chance of COVID-19 spreading in reopened schools, but Deming argues that extensive contact tracing, along with appropriate distancing measures, can minimize this risk. Unequivocally, safeguarding educational spending and ensuring equal access to education during COVID-19 is critical to stemming long-term inequality.
Gender Gaps
COVID-19 has also transformed the landscape of gender equality. The most prominent indicator of inequality in this sphere is the gender wage gap: the average difference in earnings between male and female full-time workers. In an interview with the HPR, Hannah Bowles, co-director of the Harvard Women and Public Policy Program, noted that the gender wage gap is primarily explained by the types of jobs men and women tend to hold: Men tend to dominate the highest-paid occupations and women many of the lowest. COVID-19 will likely worsen economic insecurity for underprivileged women, since female-dominated sectors of the economy, like retail and hospitality, are among those hardest hit by the crisis, Bowles said.. She warned of the long-term challenges female-dominate sectors will face, saying, “While the economy is expected to rebound, increased reliance on online communications and commerce could soften demand for low-skilled workers in these sectors.” Moreover, single mothers and parents are at greater risk of falling into poverty not only due to persistent interruptions in access to reliable child care or worker benefits and protections, but also because of the need to turn to part-time or gig work to gain temporal flexibility.
Equally important are the pandemic’s noneconomic implications. History has shown that pandemics and economic crises tend to heighten women’s risk of domestic violence. Further evidence suggests not only that women of lower socioeconomic status are at increased risk of gender-based violence, but also that victims of domestic violence have more difficulty remaining employed and are at increased risk of sustaining lasting economic insecurity. Bowles added that since people who are transgender or gender-nonconforming tend to be overrepresented among the economically insecure and among the victims of gender-based violence, they may may be in an especially vulnerable position coming out of a protracted economic and health crisis. In light of these challenges, Bowles advocated for government action, specifically access to state-sponsored paid family leave, which would help to protect the economic security of the least privileged working families, as well as federal support for evidence-based interventions to reduce domestic violence and help protect victims.
Amid the difficulties wrought by COVID-19, there may be a silver lining. Heroism during crises tends to be associated with male figures and masculine stereotypes, but the ongoing pandemic has elicited numerous and diverse examples of women being heralded worldwide for their public leadership and frontline service, from heads of state to healthcare workers (the overwhelming majority of whom are women). As Bowles concluded, “I am hopeful that the prominence of women’s leadership and heroism in this crisis will produce lasting expectations that we need men and women steering and protecting us through troubled waters.”
The Wider World
It goes without saying that COVID-19’s challenges are not unique to the United States. In an interview with the HPR, Asim Khwaja, director of the Harvard Center for International Development, laid out how COVID-19 has impacted developing economies. On one hand, some consequences will be conspicuous. On the macroeconomic front, while developed economies like the United States have been able to borrow liberally and run deficits, developing economies have far less financial flexibility and will face markedly more difficult economic recoveries. On educational access, Khwaja referenced Pakistan to demonstrate how COVID-19 has visibly affected educational access: “When a natural disaster hits, schools shut down, and it’s the poor kids who can’t compensate for lost education. It’s the same with COVID-19.” However, while many consequences will be easily seen, others will be less obvious. Khwaja cited some subtle, yet significant second-order effects of COVID-19, from women who are not showing up in hospitals to give birth for fear of catching the virus, to people getting immunized less, to income shocks that will threaten the food and job security of the world’s most underprivileged populations.
COVID-19 will also have significant political ramifications around the world. First, one inadvertent consequence of forced national quarantines has been an erosion of public trust, which will likely be most severe in developing economies, where political trust is already low. “People may refuse to be tested in fear of being forcibly quarantined,” Khwaja explained, “It’s a lose-lose situation: In the short-term, you don’t solve the health problem, while in the long-term you break trust.” Additionally, Khwaja noted that political minorities will bear the burden of blame for the virus. “Every country has its own notion of the outsider. Whether it is Asian Americans in the United States, Muslims in India, or Shias in Pakistan, every country has its own narrative of ‘the foreign has brought the disease.’” These nativist tendencies are particularly dangerous amid COVID-19, as governments have increased control in people’s everyday lives to control the virus at the expense of individual liberties. In a world that is already engulfed in populism, the desire to assign blame for COVID-19 will likely feed into paranoia and result in heightened political discrimination against minorities. As Khwaja asked, “Once you open Pandora’s box, who’s going to close it?”
Ultimately, Khwaja asserts that decision-making must be informed by a regular flow of information; without proper feedback, it is difficult to tell which policy responses to COVID-19 are the most effective. Evidence-based policymaking will be particularly challenging in developing economies, where data collection is already weak or nonexistent and will be made even more so with COVID-19. For this reason, Khawaja stresses that in the future, countries must make data collection a priority.
Looking Forward
Unequivocally, responses to COVID-19 must consider not only short-term solutions to stemming the public health crisis, but also how to counter the pandemic’s long-term impacts on inequality, from protecting equal access to education, to promoting gender equality, to preserving the political bonds that connect societies together. In a world of skyrocketing inequality, where fiction is lauded over fact, where politics is plagued with cynicism and distrust, evidenced-based policies that protect our world’s most vulnerable populations have never been more urgently needed.
Image source: Flickr/Patrick Thibodeau