2022, Hannes Schwandt, "Income and COVID 19's Impact on Life Expectancy"

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected different subgroups of the population, based on race, ethnicity, and income, in different ways.  In a new study using individual death records from the state of California, NBER Research Associates Janet Currie of Princeton University, Hannes Schwandt of Northwestern University, and Till von Wachter of UCLA, along with several collaborators, document the disparate impact of the pandemic on life expectancy for individuals who reside in locations with different median incomes. This research, which was funded by the National Institute of Aging and the National Center for Translational Science, finds substantial variation across income strata, with a much larger drop in life expectancy between 2019 and 2021 in low-income than high-income areas. Schwandt summarizes these findings in the video above. NBER maintains an archive of videos on pandemic-related research.