The COVID-19 crisis and (in)equity: what lessons can we learn?

Summary

Article by Tonia Warnecke of the Department of Social Entrepreneurship at Rollins College, The COVID-19 crisis and (in)equity: what lessons can we learn?, in the International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education, Vol. 12, No. 1, 2021, pages 8-13. Focusing on the USA, the article discusses the disproportionate impacts of the pandemic on disadvantaged and marginalised populations and the ways the national crisis response exacerbated them, covering the gig economy, the digital divide, healthcare access and provision, remote work, national crisis management, the paycheck protection program, worker safety and unemployment. It draws lessons for reframing decision-making processes toward greater inclusivity. The biographical note identifies the author as the George D. and Harriet W. Cornell Professor of Social Entrepreneurship.

Summary drafted by a model from the document's text below and checked by script against that text before publication. It is a navigation aid, not a reading of what the document proves. Where AI is used

Cite this document

“Warnecke 2021 The Covid 19 Crisis And In Equity What Lessons Can We Learn.” Original at doi.org. Archived at Pandemic Darlings, https://pandemicdarlings.com/source-documents/warnecke-2021-the-covid-19-crisis-and-in-equity-what-lessons-can-we-le-3989b1bf51/, SHA-256 25649cff84820f68956c72273c92f1dfb8c20fffc1d89783efe7899ff1a34a85.

Full text

8 Int. J. Pluralism and Economics Education, Vol. 12, No. 1, 2021

The COVID-19 crisis and (in)equity: what lessons can
we learn?

Tonia Warnecke
Department of Social Entrepreneurship,
Rollins College,
1000 Holt Avenue – 2781, Winter Park FL 32789, USA
Email: twarnecke@rollins.edu

Abstract: Focusing on the USA, this article discusses the COVID-19
pandemic; the disproportionate impacts of the pandemic on disadvantaged and
marginalised populations; and the ways the country’s crisis response
exacerbated these impacts. Topics discussed include the gig economy, the
digital divide, healthcare access and provision, remote work, national crisis
management, the paycheck protection program, worker safety, and
unemployment. The article highlights lessons we can learn from this experience
to reframe decision-making processes for greater inclusivity.

Keywords: COVID-19; crisis; crisis management; digital divide; economics;
gender; inequity; pandemic; pluralism; policy; race; remote work; risk
management; USA.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Warnecke, T. (2021) ‘The
COVID-19 crisis and (in)equity: what lessons can we learn?’, Int. J. Pluralism
and Economics Education, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp.8–13.

Biographical notes: Tonia Warnecke is the George D. and Harriet W. Cornell
Professor of Social Entrepreneurship, and Chair of the Social Entrepreneurship
Department at Rollins College, USA. She was a Fulbright Visiting Research
Chair in International Development Studies at McGill University, Montreal,
Canada. She has an interdisciplinary educational background in economics
(PhD, MA), public and international affairs (MPIA), and political science (BA).
Her research focuses on gender, entrepreneurship, and development issues such
as finance, technology, and sustainability. In addition to publishing widely in
international journals, she has been awarded many research honours and grants
and she has collaborated with the United Nations Research Institute on Social
Development.

While every crisis is different, national and global crises including the COVID-19
pandemic tend to disproportionately impact disadvantaged and marginalised populations.
For COVID-19 in the USA, this occurs for many reasons, including differential access to
remote work arrangements; the digital divide; unequal access to quality health and
education services; and longstanding racial and gender inequities. Crisis management and
response can either reduce or exacerbate impacts on different groups. What lessons can
we learn?
During a pandemic, disparities in access to remote work arrangements are particularly
relevant. Although in early April 2020, 62% of employed Americans reported that “they
have worked from home during the crisis, a number that has doubled since mid-March”

(Brenan, 2020), many details are unclear, such as whether that work was paid or unpaid,
or whether the number of hours offered was similar to work prior to the pandemic. Nearly
one-third of Americans have reported a “temporary layoff, permanent job loss, reduction
in hours, or reduction of income” due to COVID-19 (Hrynowski, 2020). Even for
workers fortunate to work from home, care responsibilities increase (e.g., homeschooling
children, preparing more meals, or cleaning more often), and women continue to bear a
disproportionate share of unpaid and caring labour at home (Schomer, 2020).
Furthermore, while many white-collar workers are able to work from home, many
low-wage service workers, including those in retail, restaurants, and the gig economy
(e.g., UberEats, Instacart, Shipt, Postmates, Lyft) are unable to perform their tasks from
home; they are put in a daily position of ‘choosing’ between fulfilling essential needs
such as feeding their families and paying rent, or minimising their exposure to the virus –
a false choice. Racial inequalities play a critical role here: blacks and Hispanics are far
less likely than whites to have access to jobs permitting remote work (Gould and
Shierholz, 2020). Among other reasons, this is because of racial disparities in
employment in leisure and hospitality or other low-wage positions (Gould and Shierholz,
2020).
The longstanding digital divide in the USA exacerbates this issue. In 2019, a Pew
Research Center study found that 79% of white, 66% of black, and 61% of Hispanic
adults have broadband access (Perrin and Turner, 2019). Additionally, only 58% of black
and 57% of Hispanic adults have a desktop or laptop computer, in contrast to 82% of
white adults (Perrin and Turner, 2019).
However, even for those with broadband access, internet speed remains an issue in
many areas, particularly rural ones. Nearly 25% of rural Americans say accessing
high-speed Internet is a major problem – nearly twice the proportion of urban residents
(13%), and more than more twice that of suburban residents (9%) (Anderson, 2018).
Race also plays a role here: access to high-speed internet is a major problem for 31% of
non-white rural Americans, compared to 21% of white rural Americans (Anderson,
2018). In addition to impacting access to work (where remote work is permitted) and
productivity of that work, the digital divide also impacts children’s education.
Many disparities in healthcare provision and access across the county magnify the
above issues. For example, more than half the counties in the USA lack any intensive
care beds, and these are disproportionately rural (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2020).
Examining age-adjusted mortality rates through March 2, 2021, an APM Research Lab
study reveals that “Pacific Islander, Latino, Indigenous and Black Americans all have a
COVID-19 death rate of double or more that of White and Asian Americans” (APM
Research Lab, 2021). Although the available COVID-19 data are incomplete and
evolving every day, blacks already face higher death rates than other races from certain
underlying conditions that make COVID-19 more dangerous, such as heart disease
(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2019). Improving access to quality and
affordable healthcare for all Americans would help.
It is also critical to protect worker safety. Many frontline healthcare workers across
the country have faced extreme shortages of personal protective equipment (Ranney
et al., 2020), and the US needs to diversify supply chains. In the gig economy, even
though demand skyrocketed for companies like Instacart as stay-at-home orders spread, it
took a planned worker strike for Instacart to provide hand sanitiser to the shoppers it
relies on (Bursztynsky, 2020).
10 T. Warnecke

In any crisis, a timely response is essential. In the case of COVID-19, the US
response was delayed for multiple reasons, including inconsistent messaging at the
national level about the severity of the virus and the prior dismantling of a dedicated
pandemic response team (White House National Security Council Directorate for Global
Health Security and Biodefense). Additional factors include the contamination of
coronavirus test kits at the Centers for Disease Control, lags in updating the narrowly
defined criteria for testing, and red tape initially preventing state, commercial, and
academic labs from developing test kits, all of which limited effective and overall testing
capacity and allowed the virus to spread unchecked for a longer period of time (Patel,
2020).
This illustrates the importance of proactive approaches to the components of risk
management including knowledge, insurance, protection, and coping (World Bank,
2014). More attention must be paid to pandemic planning and the clarification of
responsibilities at the federal and state levels (as an example, the competition among
states for the same resources was inefficient and expensive). Additionally, continued
investment in health, education, and employment resources at the state level is critical. In
Florida, for example, the state’s unemployment system is broken and ineffectual, recently
ranked worst in the country (Sunderland, 2020); this hinders the potential for economic
recovery, but also harms the personal sustainability of three million Floridians (so far)
who filed for unemployment during the pandemic (Florida Department of Economic
Opportunity, 2021). It showcases the fact that the availability of resources and
opportunities does not always mean they are de facto accessible.
Inequities are often exacerbated through crisis response programs. For example, the
upper income limit for taxpayers to obtain the full $1,200 individual stimulus payment
from the government was USD $75,000 for an individual or USD $150,000 for a couple.
As such, some of the stimulus payments are assisting upper-middle-income and
high-income Americans; while some may need assistance at this time, these groups are
more likely to have access to remote work opportunities and more assets in general than
lower-income and lower-middle-income Americans. The stimulus payments also neglect
to consider the significant cost of living disparities from state to state.1
Another example of the way crisis response can widen inequalities lies in the
paycheck protection program (PPP). While the PPP was intended to support small
businesses, billions of relief dollars were allocated to corporations or public companies
with financial issues predating the coronavirus; large companies are more likely to have
sophisticated accounting assistance and priority relationships with large banks (Zhou,
2020). Failure to specify many restrictions on fund access also contributed to the
problem, by enabling a significant amount of unproductive rent-seeking through
lobbying. The ineffective targeting of the program inflates the US deficit but has not
prioritised those most in need.
Because poorly managed crises exacerbate chaos, the issues highlighted during a
crisis may be deprioritised afterwards. In recent years, for example, public health lessons
from the 1918 flu pandemic as well as economic lessons from the Great Recession and
the 1997 Asian crisis were set aside or ignored (El-Erian, 2017; Brockell, 2020; Shih,
2020; Deane, 2021; Mooney, 2021), to the detriment of millions of people. If such
lessons were not cast aside, non-pharmaceutical interventions, consumer protection, and
supply chain resilience would likely have been more robust in the first phase of the
pandemic.
The COVID-19 crisis and (in)equity 11

All of these issues contributed to the inequities discussed above. The equity gaps are
large and diverse in the USA, with only some highlighted here, but many opportunities
remain to reframe economic decision-making and risk management processes to be more
inclusive of marginalised and less advantaged groups. For example, the maintenance of
equity provision in the American Rescue Plan prevents state or local education
funding/staffing cuts from disproportionately impacting schools serving large numbers of
students in poverty (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2021; Ujifusa, 2021).2
Pluralist economics education plays an important role here, by encouraging critical
thinking, the inclusion of diverse economic perspectives, and the examination of
interrelationships between economy, society, and environment. While evidence-based
approaches are critical, these must be grounded in analyses of diverse populations and
experiences. Educators can help students develop these skills through experiential class
projects utilising qualitative survey methodologies; such projects can tackle a real-world
issue and partner with a local non-profit, government, business, or community group to
bolster understanding of a target population and the challenges they face.3 The project
methods and scope can be tailored to the introductory or advanced level. For advanced
undergraduate or graduate level courses, following the full human-centred design
thinking process enables students to analyse the knowledge gleaned from interviews and
surveys and develop potential solutions for prototyping and testing.4
Since structural inequalities impact all aspects of life, flexibility exists for professors
to orient projects around the issues most relevant for the course subject and curriculum
they need to cover. For courses with an embedded focus area (e.g., environmental
economics, health economics, economics of race and gender) the projects centre on that
sphere, while projects in core courses such as microeconomics or research methods may
span various issues or may focus on an issue chosen by the professor. Learning (rather
than assuming) how different demographic groups experience crises is the first step to
designing programs and policies that can successfully mitigate adverse impacts. Another
step is to build on and apply that knowledge during non-crisis periods, strengthening
capacity for effective risk management that is shared across multiple institutions, from
household and community to business and government. Labour, business, development,
and public economics courses are well suited to integrate case studies of risk
management practices, link them to diverse economic perspectives, and investigate
impacts on different population groups.

References
Anderson, M. (2018) ‘About a quarter of rural Americans say access to high speed
internet is a major problem’, Pew Research Center, 10 September [online]
https://www.pewresearch.org/facttank/2018/09/10/about-a-quarter-of-rural-americans-say-
access-to-high-speed-internet-is-amajor-problem/ (accessed 23 April 2020).
APM Research Lab (2021) The Color of Coronavirus: COVID-19 Deaths by Race and Ethnicity in
the US, 5 March [online] https://www.apmresearchlab.org/covid/deaths-by-race (accessed
13 August 2021).
Bennett, J., Fry, R. and Kochhar, R. (2020) ‘Are you in the American middle class?’, Pew Research
Center, 23 July online] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/07/23/are-you-in-the-
american-middle-class/ (accessed 11 June 2021).
Brenan, M. (2020) ‘US workers discovering affinity for remote work’, Gallup, 3 April [online]
https://news.gallup.com/poll/306695/workers-discovering-affinity-remote-work.aspx
(accessed 26 April 2020).
12 T. Warnecke

Brockell, G. (2020) ‘Trump is ignoring the lessons of 1918 flu pandemic that killed millions,
historian says’, Washington Post, 29 February.
Bursztynsky, J. (2020) ‘Instacart to provide workers with safety kits following strike over
coronavirus protections’, CNBC, 2 April [online] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/02/
coronavirus-instacart-is-giving-its-shoppers-health-and-safety-kids.html (accessed 1 May
2020).
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (2021) ‘American Rescue Plan Act will help millions and
bolster the economy’, CBPP, 15 March [online] https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-
inequality/american-rescue-plan-act-will-help-millions-and-bolster-the-economy (accessed
12 June 2021).
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2019) ‘Spotlight on racial and ethnic disparities in
heart disease’, CDC, April [online] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus/spotlight/2019-heart-
disease-disparities.htm (accessed 1 May 2020).
Deane, S. (2021) ‘Money market mutual funds ignore great financial crisis lessons’, 1 April
[online] https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/money-market-mutual-funds-ignore-great-financial-
crisis-lessons-2021-04-21 (accessed 10 June 2021).
El-Erian, M. (2017) ‘These are the lost lessons of the Great Recession’, World Economic Forum,
21 August [online] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/08/the-lost-lesson-of-the-financial-
crisis (accessed 10 June 2021).
Florida Department of Economic Opportunity (2021) ‘State and Federal Reemployment Assistance
Claim Workflow March 15, 2020 – June 9, 2021’ [online] http://lmsresources.
labormarketinfo.com/covid19/index.html (accessed 11 June 2021).
Gould, E. and Shierholz, H. (2020) ‘Not everyone can work from home’, Economic Policy
Institute, 19 March [online] https://www.epi.org/blog/black-and-hispanic-workers-are-much-
less-likely-to-be-able-to-work-from-home/ (accessed 29 April 2020).
Hrynowski, Z. (2020) ‘COVID-19 disrupts 30% of Americans’ jobs or finances’, Gallup, 27 April
[online] https://news.gallup.com/poll/309299/covid-disrupts-americans-jobs-finances.aspx
(accessed 1 May 2020).
IDEO (2015) The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design, IDEO, San Francisco.
Kaiser Family Foundation (2020) ‘Millions of older Americans live in counties with no ICU beds
as pandemic intensifies’, KHN News, 20 March [online] https://khn.org/news/as-coronavirus-
spreads-widely-millions-of-older-americans-live-in-counties-with-no-icu-beds/ (accessed
20 April 2020).
Kepner, V.K. (2020) ‘Service-learning in the undergraduate classroom’, International Journal of
Pluralism and Economics Education, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp.160–171.
Mooney, G. (2021) ‘The dangers of ignoring history lessons during a pandemic’, Annals of Internal
Medicine [online] https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-0449 (accessed 11 June
2021).
Patel, N.V. (2020) ‘Why the CDC botched its coronavirus testing’, MIT Technology Review,
5 March [online] https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/03/05/905484/why-the-cdc-
botched-its-coronavirus-testing/ (accessed 30 April 2020).
Perrin, A. and Turner, E. (2019) ‘Smartphones help blacks and Hispanics bridge some but
not all digital gaps with whites’, Pew Research Center, 20 August [oinline]
https://www.pewresearch.org/facttank/2019/08/20/smartphones-help-blacks-hispanics-bridge-
some-but-not-all-digital-gaps-with-whites/ (accessed 29 April 2020).
Ranney, M.L., Griffeth, V. and Jha, A.K. (2020) ‘Critical supply shortages — the need for
ventilators and personal protective equipment during the Covid-19 pandemic’, The New
England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 382, No. 18, pp.e41(1–3).
Schomer, S. (2020) ‘Male and female workers are experiencing COVID-19 very differently’,
Entrepreneur, 21 April [online] https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/349534 (accessed
30 April 2020).
The COVID-19 crisis and (in)equity 13

Shih, W. (2020) ‘Global supply chains in a post-pandemic world’, Harvard Business Review,
Vol. 98, No. 5, pp.82–89.
Snider, S. (2020) ‘Where do I fall in the American economic class system?’, 8 December [online]
https://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/family-finance/articles/where-do-i-fall-in-
the-american-economic-class-system (accessed 11 June 2021).
Sunderland, K. (2020) ‘Florida unemployment: state’s system worst in country, study says’,
WFLA, 29 April [online] https://www.wfla.com/community/health/coronavirus/florida-
unemployment/florida-unemployment-states-system-worst-in-country-study-says/ (accessed
1 May 2020).
Ujifusa, A. (2021) ‘COVID-19 aid package protects funding for students in poverty, but could
challenge schools’, Education Week, 18 March [online] https://www.edweek.org/policy-
politics/covid-19-aid-package-protects-funding-for-students-in-poverty-but-could-challenge-
schools/2021/03 (accessed 12 June 2021).
World Bank (2014) Risk and Opportunity: World Development Report 2014, Washington DC.
Zhou, L. (2020) ‘Why major food and hotel chains are getting stimulus money meant for small
businesses’, Vox, 22 April [online] https://www.vox.com/2020/4/22/21229319/ruth-chris-
shakeshack-potbelly-ppp-loans (accessed 1 May 2020).

Notes
1 According to Pew Research Center, middle income households earn from two-thirds to twice
the median US income (Bennett et al., 2020). Median income figures are adjusted by cost of
living; the threshold also varies by family size. For a US family of three in 2019, middle-class
thresholds ranged from $53,413 to $106,827, while upper-middle-class thresholds ranged from
$106,827 to $373,894 (Snider, 2020).
2 In the Great Recession, cuts disproportionately impacted schools serving low-income students
(Ujifusa, 2021).
3 For a resourceful, ‘how-to’ article on service-learning, please see Kepner (2020). For a guide
to the human-centred design thinking process, please see IDEO (2015).
4 With advance planning and compliance with Institutional Review Board requirements at one’s
institution, it may be possible to utilise survey/interview data from class projects in
community-based research articles, fostering synergy between one’s teaching and published
scholarship.

File and source

File: warnecke-2021-the-covid-19-crisis-and-in-equity-what-lessons-can-we-learn.pdf
Size: 183,298 bytes
SHA-256: 25649cff84820f68956c72273c92f1dfb8c20fffc1d89783efe7899ff1a34a85
Our copy: warnecke-2021-the-covid-19-crisis-and-in-equity-what-lessons-can-we-learn.pdf
Original: doi.org