Covid19 and Inequality

Some people frame this pandemic as a “great leveller” because people are all vulnerable to getting ill. This argument goes something like, we’re all facing the prospect of getting sick, we may all lose loved ones, and we are all having our routines altered as we commit to social distancing.

However I’m not alone in arguing that in general this pandemic is exacerbating existing inequalities rather than simply creating some sort of “shared experience” equality. Capturing all these impacts is a really important research and activism agenda, but here are the trends that have jumped out of me – at least in Canada and similar advanced industrial democracies or whatever we want to call them.

Risk and Age

The first aspect of inequality relating to the Covid19 pandemic that comes to mind is age. The general consensus is that people who are older, alongside people who are immunocompromised or have any history of respiratory difficulties. The CDC has released a report on this[i] that indicates to date, fatality is higher for those aged 85 and older and then decreases with age.

In Canada, the outbreaks in care homes have been particularly awful for residents and for workers (the latter of which I will discuss more further on). In Ontario 27 people have died in one home, while over 100 people have become sick at a home in Laval in Montreal, and 17 people have died who were living in a care home in North Vancouver.[ii] The largest outbreak in Alberta is also at a care home/centre. There have also been some issues with testing in care homes in Ontario around admitting asymptomatic residents.

Some people might see this as a one-off, but I think the conditions in care homes are worthy of more thought for the long term as we see populations aging – how do we best care for people who need more medical support in their later years? This is not my area of expertise but it’s definitely something I think societies should be having more frank conversations about.

Life cycle effects

When we start to think about the long-term effects, these are going to vary across the life cycle. After the financial crisis, there was some evidence suggesting that entering the workforce (from high school or university or another form of education) during a recession can have a scarring effect on income. Will we see another wave of millennials and Gen Zs moving home? Deepened housing insecurity and job insecurity? It’s possible, especially without a comprehensive long-term policy plan.

There might also be effects on people’s family planning decisions or care burdens – we don’t know what the long-term health effects are for people who have recovered. We also don’t know what the financial insecurity will do for populations. I’ve seen people joking about a COVID baby boom, which is one option. Another option is that people delay making big life decisions as we head into another recession.

Gender

The pandemic also has gendered effects in relation to running households when everyone is home. Women in straight relationships still do more of the household work than their male partners in the US according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics[iii] and the same is true in Britain – where women do an average of ten more hours of household work, including childcare, a week.[iv] In households where both parents are able to work from home, the burden is most likely falling on women to manage increased dishes, cooking, and childcare – while managing the challenge of trying to get kids through whatever schoolwork type setup they are focused on. The flow on effects for women’s careers will be interesting to track.

There are a couple of other aspects of gender inequality that stand out that we didn’t get to in the podcast. One is the gendered nature of essential work – medical work, work in supermarkets or grocery stores and pharmacies. Exactly how gendered is essential work? I took a really quick look at the Stats Can data on the proportion of men and women in occupations for 2019 (using NOCs – the National Occupation Classification titles).[v] IN 2019, health occupations writ large were pretty women-dominated – women make up 79% of this labour force. Service work is more evenly split – 48% of retail workers and 53% of service support workers are women. When it comes to front-line public protection services (think fire, police), the labour force is overwhelmingly male – only 17.5% of workers in this category in 2019 were women. So, there are of course some greater risks for men in this category.

And finally, a pretty scary concern gender-based violence in a pandemic. This is a high stress time and people are spending as much time as possible at home. Add to that the stresses of job loss – it’s a very high stress situation.[vi] A recent StatsCan survey reported on by the Toronto Star indicated that one in ten women were “very or extremely concerned” about the potential for family discord or violence.[vii] While governments and organizations appear to know about this issue, it’s still incredibly hard to address. I took a brief look only, I must admit, at Ontario’s response and crisis lines are open.[viii]I’d be curious to know what extra resources are being provided to get people out of unsafe home situations. Shelters are also under extra pressure as a result, trying to keep physical distancing protocols in place.

So, a real mix of gender-related inequalities are being highlighted by this pandemic – all of which are worthy of serious responses from governments, communities, and individuals – and worthy of further research.

Race

This pandemic is also exacerbating racial inequalities – notably relating to both health and work.

It is incredibly alarming to note that in the US, preliminary statistics indicate that COVID19 is killing black people are disproportionately higher rates.[ix] It speaks to the US’s ongoing legacy of inequality and racism. These are revealed in long-term economic and health inequalities. So, Black Americans are less likely to have access to quality medical care, more likely to be exposed to diseases related to poverty (some of which are respiratory), and face the initial burden of medical professionals providing substandard care to people of colour because of racist assumptions about pain.

In Canada, the issue of race-related inequality seems to so often be sidestepped by a culture of pretending racism doesn’t exist here. The most basic way to think about it, I think, is that there are persistent economic inequalities between people of colour and white Canadians that translate into poor quality housing, less access to medical care, and other factors that can lead to ill health like living in food deserts or near sources of pollution. These factors cause bad health outcomes, including respiratory diseases, which can then make people more vulnerable to COVID-19.

For example, in some countries including Canada, there is a thing called the “healthy immigrant effect” where people who migrate here initially are actually healthier than the general population. However, over time, some evidence indicates that this effect wears off and immigrants end up with worse health outcomes [x]. York University professor Professor Michaela Hynie has worked extensively on the mental health outcomes of refugees in Canada. She has a review article in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry [xi]from last year that summarizes the evidence indicating that over time, the mental health of refugees and asylum seekers who settle in Canada actually declines. Income and employment are especially important in this story, as are housing, language barriers, the settlement process, social isolation, and discrimination.

There is a very useful piece on The Conversation by Professor Roberta Timothy (University of Toronto’s Dalla Lama School of Public Health) [xii] that discusses the fraught history of government and medical treatment of black, indigenous, and other racialized communities in Canada and the US. There is a lot of distrust as a result of histories of mistreatment. In the article she asks, how are people supposed to navigate health systems that “consistently violate” them?

Also, of course, many essential workers are also racialized workers – and when you look at care-related roles in healthcare, elder care, and childcare, race and gender collide here to result in a disempowered, marginalized, and poorly paid workforce who are now also extra at-risk of catching coronavirus.

Work

Focusing on work is one way to consider the impacts of economic, race, and gender inequalities altogether. Some of these issues came up on episode 17 of Pullback, where you talked about champions and problems of 2019: no sick leave for most wage workers and barely any kinds of protections for gig workers.

Wage workers are likely to experience unemployment and many in Canada don’t usually have sick leave. EI offers very little to minimum wage workers
Independent contractors/gig workers are essential but denied all the usual protections of employment, including safe workplaces. Gig economy workers are very exposed to the public.

None of this is pleasant or fun for any of us. I’m not disputing that. But I think the ability to quarantine and minimize discomfort depends on your wealth and your job. If you can stay home without financial stress, you’re in a safer position than someone doing essential work or experiencing housing insecurity.

Essential workers

Essential workers still have to work, in increasingly hazardous conditions, and many don’t have employee status. Essential workers are, roughly:

Health professionals of all sorts
Social services
Community service workers e.g. people collecting waste, sewage treatment, the justice system, police and firefighters, corrections etc.
People looking after key infrastructure (water, power, internet)
Some manufacturing, agriculture, and food production
Some researchers – doing research that might help treat or prevent coronavirus.
People working in supermarkets, liquor stores, corner stores
People making and delivering food
People who clean essential spaces, like hospitals and supermarkets
In Ontario, it’s also some construction workers, which has been the subject of debate.

There are two main concerns for these workers: (1) safety on the job and (2) wages and job protection more generally.

Safety on the job: so, of course people who are actively working are the most at-risk of being exposes to coronavirus, especially health workers – and especially if they don’t have access to personal protective equipment, which has been a major issue in the US. In Canada, the Brookfield Institute has done a cool/scary analysis of the risk of COVID-19 to workers in Canada.[xiii] It graphs frequency of exposure to infection with the closeness of contact. It basically shows that GPs and other medical practitioners are at high risk of exposure, followed by bus drivers, then delivery couriers and light-duty cleaners in the middle, then pharmacy workers, security guards and cooks, with writers at the low end. The risk for education professionals has shifted down as those things have moved online. The write up, by Viet Vu and Nisa Malii, also points out that many bus and Uber drivers in Canada are at least 65 years old, so they are likely even more at-risk.

Wages and labour protections: service workers in particular are likely to be in precarious jobs, exposed to the double-whammy of health risks and unstable work. This relates to a problem that predates the pandemic: the crummy state of worker’s rights in Canada which makes many workers vulnerable to poverty.

Some essential workers face increased safety issues AND the struggles of precarious work.

Other precarious workers are now struggling to earn any income and facing the stresses of this pandemic (worrying about safety, kids at home etc.) without any job security.

Precarious work

It’s probably helpful to step through what precarious work is. It’s basically a term for work that sucks on almost every dimension. Precarious work is work that is irregular, low paid, and has no job security (so it’s easy to get fired/lose the ability to do a certain kind of gig).

This can include driving Ubers, working on casual contracts in cafes, and working informally (without a contract)
So gig work and low-paid contract work is what we mean here

Precarious work is a feature in most countries and a growing phenomenon even in European countries like Germany that have strong labour protection legacies. It’s not a new thing – work outside of standard employment has always taken place – but it is a problem for ensuring all people have their basic needs met and are treated fairly and with respect in our economic systems.

People involved in labour or who study work usually contrast it with work that meets the definition of a “standard employment relationship” – that is work that occurs in regular hours, is permanent and continuous [xiv], and usually involves entitlements to things like EI, extra health insurance, health and safety regulation, and perhaps sick leave. They also do not have steady income – their wages can fluctuate depending on demand for their labour.

The other key characteristic of precarious work is a lack of job security. In a lot of countries, job security has declined since the 1980s – there has been a shift in the organization of the labour market away from the idea of a job for life and towards the idea that people will move more fluidly between jobs. People also tend to work more jobs across their life span now.

In Canada, employees do still have some protections against being fired. If you are an employee, your boss can fire you but they have to give reasonable notice or they have to have just cause for an immediate “summary” dismissal. Contract workers can be dismissed per the terms set out in their contract – a breach of the contract can terminate it, though this may end up in a court process. People working informally without a contract have no protections, of course.

There’s a really good CBC piece on the experiences of janitorial workers during the pandemic – Michael Enright interviewed Deena Ladd, who is the executive director of the Workers’ Action Center in Toronto who do lots of good work [xv]. Deena explains that most cleaners are independent contractors who work for low pay. They work with heavy duty chemicals that they don’t get briefed about and little protective gear. Many are immigrants or undocumented so working informally. This group is the typical example of precarious workers. They work irregular hours in tough conditions with no benefits, no health and safety oversight, and poor pay.

This group has of course been affected by the pandemic: many have been asked to use even more harsh chemicals and are not given information about how to use these chemicals safely, they’re working more hours (or being asked to), and many are afraid to lose their jobs so won’t refuse to work even if they feel unsafe. If they quit, they’re not eligible for CERB and if they’re not employees, no EI. They might be eligible for provincial financial assistance if they have a SIN number and meet various provincial eligibility criteria, but usually this type of social assistance is set at a very low level.

Deena calls for us to reconsider how we value this type of work – the pandemic shows us just how important is for keeping us all safe and healthy. It doesn’t make sense that it should be done with no pay, no job security, and no health and safety protections.

Job loss generally

The other big concern is that in many countries, unemployment is skyrocketing. This, of course, increases inequality by taking people from the middle of the income range to the bottom.

Even those who are eligible for EI are in a worse position now – EI pays out at 55% of your earnings but this is capped at a maximum of $573 a week, AND the number of weeks you can get it for is capped, depending on the regional employment rate.

We know that a million Canadians applied for EI in the week starting 16 March! Layoffs have kept growing. The US is also experiencing mass unemployment.

We are, in all likelihood, facing another recession – and recessions are always worse for the poor. So, outside of this health crisis, things look pretty grim too.

Social Policy Responses

There are a whole host of inequalities and problems relating to inequality in Canada and beyond that this pandemic is exacerbating – both short term and long term. Governments are responding to some of these problems with a whole range of initiatives.

Here are some criteria to help evaluate social policy responses:

1. Any form of assistance should create as few administrative burdens as possible. This is a concept developed by Pamela Herd and Donald Moynihan, two American professors, to capture all the ways in which government can cause issues for the very people various policies are supposed to support.[xvi] If something is low in administrative burdens, this means:

a. It’s easy to learn about and understand

b. You don’t have to do a ton of paperwork, or waiting around on the phone

c. People are treated equally and with respect in the application/access process

d. Using the benefit doesn’t carry any stigma – there’s no negative social image associated with it.

2. Assistance should be as universal/inclusive as possible so that the most people possible get support

a. This relates to the administrative burden thing – as soon as you start placing more eligibility criteria on things, it’s harder for people to access them even if they are entitled.

b. It should also be equitable and promoted to all groups (e.g. available info in multiple languages, promoted everywhere…)

3. Assistance should be targeted at the people most unable to meet their basic needs right now (this has to balance somehow with the second one).

a. So, much more support for people experiencing homelessness

b. More support to renters than people with mortgages, is an assumption of mine

c. And of course, more support to precarious workers or people who weren’t in work before the crisis.

Changes to provide people with more income

Canada straight away (18 March) introduced a tax credit for low income families AND provided a moratorium on student loans. It also increased the Canada Child Benefit.

These all seem like good things though I think it’s obvious they wouldn’t have been enough alone. What about bigger forms of income support?

Employment Insurance

In theory, EI should support many Canadians who lose work at this time.To be eligible for EI, though, a person must have worked sufficient hours in insurable employment and have not worked in at least seven days through no fault of their own – and be available for and actively seeking work [xvii]. People must also apply for and have received this support.

Those working in non-standard employment relationships like contract-based work are excluded (though some can opt in and pay coverage premiums), which is concerning considering that misclassification of workers as contract workers rather than employees is a known problem in Ontario. As a result, between 30 and 41% of Ontarians are actually eligible for EI.[xviii] Eligibility is also unevenly distributed across Ontarians: people aged 15-24, 55 and above, recent migrants, and rural residents are much less likely to be eligible and women are slightly less likely to be eligible than men – especially among self-employed workers.

So – not enough coverage, annoying to access (according to friends), and a short term bandaid really.

CERB

The Federal Government introduced the Canada Emergency Response Benefit. In recognition that EI wasn’t going to cut it as a response to rising unemployment. The Canada Emergency Response Benefit provides $2000 a month for up to four months for workers who lose their income as a result of the COVID19 pandemic.

To be eligible you must:

Live in Canada and be over 15
Have stopped working because of Covid19, not voluntarily quit, and be out of EI or sickness benefits
- But you can be self-employed OR an employee
- You can even STILL be employed – as long as you’re not getting paid most of your income***
Have had income of at least $5K last year
Be, or expect to be, out of income for at least two weeks.

The idea is that it should help anyone who has lost income due to the pandemic and its flow on effects (e.g. people who need to undertake childcare now). It’s supposed to cover employees, self-employed people, and contractors more generally.

You can apply either through Service Canada or through the CRA. Nearly a quarter of a million people did on the first day you could apply, and only those born in the first few months of the year could apply (to try and manage the tide of applications).

Positives: It’s easy to access because it’s built on the principle of “presumed eligibility” – it’s set up to assume people who apply should be receiving it and so it’s granted quickly. Apparently, it’s being paid quickly.

The checks on eligibility will come later, which I think is a pretty good decision in these circumstances, though I hope the checks aren’t arduous and I hope repayment schemes are flexible.

The government did the right thing by merging together the previous Emergency Care Benefit and Emergency Support benefit
Simplicity is key!

The second reason I like it is that the government has continued to widen eligibility as they come across more groups of people who are excluded – so we’re heading towards something closer to universality (though we’re not there yet). Expansions:

Just yesterday, the government announced it would expand eligibility to workers who are still working but earning $1000 or less a month, including seasonal workers who have run out of EI during the pandemic.
This helps gig workers and independent contractors – at least in the short term (Sunil Johal has a good piece on this on the Policy Response blog)
More is coming for post-secondary students too as this group was initially left out – so we’ll see.

There are, though, some problems with it:

Remember our janitors – many of whom are precarious? They might be able to get it but
Anyone who QUITS their job is also ineligible – so if you quit because you don’t want to work in unsafe conditions, you won’t get it.
the undocumented group is rules out as you need a valid SIN to access it
- this one is tough – it makes sense that the grant is being run through the tax system – administratively this is easiest. I’d be curious to know if there are ways around this.
Anyone who was unemployed before the pandemic, receiving some income support from their province, isn’t eligible and is receiving a LOT less (ODSP pays out at $1169 a month for a single person, OW is even less). These people now face even tougher labour markets.
In Ontario, people getting social assistance can get one-off emergency assistance to help with costs relating to the pandemic (e.g. transport, food, clothing, cleaning supplies) but these are capped at $100 for a single person and $200 for families.
There’s variation across the provinces too which is the result of having this be a provincial responsibility rather than federal.

Wage subsidy program

So the other main tranche of the government’s response is the wage subsidy program, which many countries have put in place (notably not the US), including the Netherlands.

In Canada, businesses and people who are self-employed can receive a subsidy covering 75% of wages for up to three months. The government expanded this to businesses of all sizes after criticism the size rules were unhelpful.

The idea behind wage subsidies, which Zucman and Saez championed in a recent New York Times article, is to protect jobs and minimize labour market mayhem later. Wage subsidies help to “freeze” the labour market for some, meaning less re-matching/job applications and hiring to do later. That kind of makes sense.

However there are some problems with this:

It might just retain shitty jobs
It might prevent any positive kinds of alignment towards a new economy, new models of consumption and production…
In New Zealand there have been a ton of issues with this – employers are “trusted” to pass it on to workers, but many haven’t been, or haven’t been paying the non-covered percent.

Effects on social services more generally

Social services that support people struggling with poverty are facing a really hard time – they have had to change their service models quickly AND possibly face insecurity around contracts and funding for the long term. The Globe and Mail’s daily update at the end of March ad a section on the effects for Canada’s charities

So far I think there has been no federal financial aid for these organizations* (note: the Federal government announced additional funding after the podcast was recorded)
Many have had to lay off staff.

This is an area of real concern – a lot of these organizations are the closest to people who are struggling right now.

Thinking long-term post crisis (!?)

This podcast is about ethical consumerism writ large

I’m not the first person to ask whether this is our chance to make a transition to a greener economy and a stronger, more progressive welfare state. I mean, I hope so?

In some ways, the rate of job destruction does suggest we have a chance to rethink our production and consumption needs – what do countries want to produce and consume, and what kinds of jobs should people be doing as a result?

What this will do to people’s priorities and political values long term
What it will do in terms of responses
- Short term measures reveal governments’ priorities
- And then what will happen long term?

Benefits need to be decoupled from employment status, otherwise benefits accrue mainly to the middle class, not the worst off (which is of course why governments and many voters like them).

The pandemic is making a pretty good case for universal social assistance set at a decent level for everyone below a certain wealth and income threshold. There is a Boston Review piece by Stuart White that argues for a wealth floor and that was also quite convincing – the idea is that everyone needs some wealth that provides them with coverage for hard times, extra costs, or the ability to fully participate in politics (in the US), invest in education, and similar.[xix] It sounds freeing to be honest – especially when you consider the cognitive burden of poverty.

Endnotes

[i] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Severe Outcomes Among Patients with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) — United States, February 12–March 16, 2020.”

[ii] Grant and Anderssen, “‘These People Are Dying, Gasping for Air.’”

[iii] Bureau of Labor Statistics, “American Time Use Survey-2018 Results”; Carpenter, “Millennial Women Are Working More. But They’re Still Doing Most of the Housework.”

[iv] Burkeman, “Dirty Secret”; Office for National Statistics, “Women Shoulder the Responsibility of ‘Unpaid Work.’”

[v] Government of Canada, “Proportion of Women and Men Employed in Occupations, Annual.”

[vi] Duhatschek, “‘Self-Isolation Is an Abuser’s Dream’ | CBC News.”

[vii] Gillis, “COVID-19 Having ‘a Profound Effect’ on the Lives of Canadians, Survey Shows.”

[viii] Government of Ontario, “Helping Women Flee Domestic Violence.”

[ix] Eligon et al., “Black Americans Face Alarming Rates of Coronavirus Infection in Some States.”

[x] Health Canada, “ARCHIVED - Migration Health.”

[xi] Hynie, “The Social Determinants of Refugee Mental Health in the Post-Migration Context.”

[xii] Timothy, “Coronavirus Is Not the ‘great Equalizer’ — Race Matters.”

[xiii] Vu and Malli, “Anything But Static.”

[xiv] Arnold and Bongiovi, “Precarious, Informalizing, and Flexible Work: Transforming Concepts and Understandings.”

[xv] CBC Radio, “Why the ‘invisible Workers’ Cleaning up COVID-19 Need Better Labour Protection | CBC Radio.”

[xvi] Herd and Moynihan, Administrative Burden: Policymaking by Other Means.

[xvii] Employment and Social Development Canada, “Section 1: Applying for Benefits.”

[xviii] Bramwell, “Training Policy for the 21st Century: Decentralization and Workforce Development Programs for Unemployed Working Age Adults in Canada,” 402; Vosko, “The Challenge of Expanding EI Coverage | The Mowat Centre,” 33.

[xix] White, “We Need a Wealth Floor, Not Just a Wealth Ceiling.”

Reach out to Alix by following her on Twitter.

Check out our other episodes on COVID-19:
Kristen and Kyla React to COVID-19
Ten Unexpected Effects of COVID-19
COVID-19, Wildfires, and the Climate Crisis
Art, Artists, and COVID-19