The growing sense that there is something fundamentally unfair about American life is one of the biggest challenges the country faces. If COVID-19 is permitted to widen those inequalities unchecked, the political and economic ramifications could be dire.
The Kaiser Family Foundation has found the COVID-19 death rate is more than twice as high for Black patients and almost twice as high for American Indian and Alaska Native patients.
- The same data showed roughly 35% of patients with household income under $15,000 became seriously ill, compared to 16% of patients with income over $50,000.
- The elderly have made up the vast majority of COVID-19 deaths, and the very fact that their deaths are seen by some as less important represents a kind of inequality of empathy.
There’s no greater inequality than who lives and who dies, but the economic impact of COVID-19 has been just as unfair.
- 865,000 women dropped out of the labor force between August and September — four times the number of men who left the workforce.
- The ratio of Black to white unemployment rose from 1.27 in April to 1.97 in August, meaning that Black Americans were out of work at nearly twice the rate of white Americans.
- The number of jobs for the top 25% of earners is now higher than it was before the pandemic, while for the bottom quarter — especially in low-wage service sector work that can’t be done remotely — jobs are lower by more than 20%.
The U.S. was already facing a future where a combination of technology and policy threatened to lock the country into ever-worsening inequality. Now the pandemic may be accelerating the arrival of that future.
