2021, Maria Polyakova, "Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Excess All-Cause Mortality from COVID-19"

The burden of COVID-19 infections and deaths has not fallen equally on members of different racial or ethnic groups. A new study of all-cause excess mortality in one of the early months of the pandemic by NBER affiliates Amy Finkelstein of MIT and Maria Polyakova of Stanford, along with their collaborators, finds that excess mortality was nearly four times greater for Blacks, and three times greater for Hispanics and Native Americans, than for non-Hispanic Whites. To compare mortality rates across groups, the researchers link Census data on race and geography to the Social Security Administration’s Numident data on dates of birth and death. They measure excess mortality in April 2020 relative to mortality for the same groups in the previous nine years. Polyakova summarizes these results in the video above.