This website uses cookies.

By clicking the "Accept" button or continuing to browse our site, you agree to first-party and session-only cookies being stored on your device to enhance site navigation and analyze site performance and traffic. For more information on our use of cookies, please see our Privacy Policy.

  1. Home
  2. ASSA Annual Meeting
  3. 2021
  4. Preliminary Program
  5. Racialized and Gendered Impacts of COVID-19
« Back to Results

Racialized and Gendered Impacts of COVID-19

Paper Session

Sunday, Jan. 3, 2021 3:45 PM - 5:45 PM (EST)

Hosted By: Union for Radical Political Economics
  • Chair: Jennifer Cohen, Miami University

COVID's Early Impact on Joblessness Among African American Women

Michelle Holder
,
John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has produced the quickest drop in employment in U.S. history. This drop has hit African American women harder than the general population. Using monthly Current Popula-tion Survey data from February through April of 2020, we analyze the differential labor force impacts on African American women in the context of their pre-existing occupational segrega-tion. Those occupations that African American women were crowded into before the pandemic-driven employment decreases were to a large degree of two kinds: those that suffered job losses that were greater in scale and came sooner than in other occupations; and those that have seen increases and involve a high risk of infection.

COVID-19 and Employment Losses for the Disabled: An Intersectional Approach

Yana van der Meulen Rodgers
,
Rutgers University

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has created immense social and economic harm for individuals and households around the globe. In the U.S., tens of millions of workers have lost their jobs since March 2020, and there is potential for further increases in unemployment and persistent hardships. Initial reports indicate that hourly, contingent, and lower-wage employees are more likely to be fired, furloughed, and suffer pandemic-related unemployment and economic harm. People with disabilities are almost twice as likely to fall into those employment categories. Women and minori-ties also stand to face the starkest employment losses as they are disproportionately represented in the hardest hit sectors.
This paper uses CPS data to examine the income and employment measures of two groups—workers with and without disabilities—following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic relative to previous years. Based on the higher rates of layoffs among workers with disabilities found in pre-vious research for earlier years, we expect to find that COVID-19 plays a larger role in the em-ployment and incomes of individuals with disabilities relative to individuals without disabilities. We use a simple decomposition approach to explore the extent to which job losses are explained by differences in the occupational distribution between those with and without disabilities, and the ex-tent to which job losses are explained by potential biases within occupations against individuals with disabilities.
Based on the greater difficulty of workers with disabilities in finding jobs, we also expect to find that individuals with disabilities have more trouble finding and maintain new jobs following the relaxation of stay-at-home orders relative to workers without disabilities. We expect these differ-ences to be even larger for women and non-white individuals with disabilities compared to their counterparts without disabilities.

The Crisis in The Crisis: Women Healthcare Workers' Mental Health

Jennifer Cohen
,
Miami University

Abstract

COVID-19 exposes and exacerbates existing social fractures. Nurses’ lived experiences, which already entailed chronic stress and acute distress prior to the pandemic. For nurses, their lives are the environment in which the pandemic is unfolding, aggravating existing stressors and introducing new ones. This case study provides a map of the fractures, directing attention to the contradictions heightened by COVID-19. The study was conducted with black women nurses South Africa, but it is increasingly clear that many of the insights apply to public health systems and to health care workers elsewhere. The contribution offers some suggestions for mitigating healthcare worker stress.

A Racially Inclusive Recovery to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Darrick Hamilton
,
New School

Abstract

The contributors to this panel evaluate the racialized and gendered consequences of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The first paper is an empirical analysis of the differential labor force impacts on African American women in the context of pre-existing occupational segregation. It identifies two effects: early decreases in employment in some sectors but increasing employment in those that involve a high risk of infection. The second examines income and employment across workers with disabilities and those without. The authors use a decomposition approach to explore the extent to which job losses are explained by differences in the occupational distribution, and the extent to which job losses are explained by potential biases within occupations against individuals with dis-abilities. The third examines chronic stress among nurses prior to the pandemic, which has aggra-vated these existing stressors and introduced new ones. This case study provides a map of social fractures and offers some suggestions for mitigating healthcare worker stress. The final paper de-velops plans for a racially inclusively recovery to the COVID-19 pandemic for the US.
JEL Classifications
  • J1 - Demographic Economics
  • B5 - Current Heterodox Approaches