COVID‐19 emergency policies, financial security, and social equity: Worldwide evidence

• Published date: 01 September 2023
• Author: Brian Y. An,Simon Porcher,Shui‐Yan Tang,Oriane Maille‐Lefranc
• Date: 01 September 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13652

SYMPOSIUM ARTICLE

COVID-19 emergency policies, financial security, and social

equity: Worldwide evidence

Brian Y. An

1

| Simon Porcher

2

| Shui-Yan Tang

3

| Oriane Maille-Lefranc

2

1

School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of

Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

2

LARGEPA—Department of Management,

Université Paris Panthéon-Assas, Paris, France

3

Price School of Public Policy, University of

Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

Correspondence

Simon Porcher, LARGEPA—Department of

Management, Université Paris Panthéon-Assas,

1 rue Guy de la Brosse, 75005 Paris, France.

Email: simon.porcher@u-paris2.fr

Abstract

Using worldwide country-level panel data of COVID-19 emergency policies and

aggregated survey responses of 46 million randomly sampled Facebook users, we

study the impact of public health and economic measures on household financial

worries among various demographic groups. The analysis reveals that public health

interventions with stringent mobility restrictions—domestic lockdowns and interna-

tional travel restrictions—increase the proportion of households with financial stress

within countries. However, economic policies with immediate disposability, like

wage support and in-kind transfers, counteract the negative impacts. Notably, youn-

ger working-age groups are particularly sensitive to such public health and eco-

nomic emergency policies in their assessment of financial security. Our results also

show that a country’s social safety net coverage and poverty rate moderate the

financial impact. As governments face challenges in containing the pandemic, this

study highlights the need to create policy packages balancing differential tradeoffs

between health and economic interventions while enhancing equity objectives.

Evidence for practice

•During the COVID-19 pandemic, public health policies with stringent mobility

restrictions, such as domestic lockdowns and international travel restrictions,

increased the proportion of households with financial worries in their countries.

Conversely, economic measures with immediate disposability, like wage support

and in-kind transfers, mitigated household financial stress.

•These financial effects are generally greater among the younger working-age

group than the older groups, and they show differential effects across genders.

•Public health policies with stringent mobility restrictions worsen financial

worries in countries with lower social safety net coverage or higher poverty. Sim-

ilarly, the mitigating effect of economic policies designed to enhance immediate

disposability is greater in countries with lower social safety net coverage or

higher poverty.

•Policymakers must be aware of the negative and differential financial effects of

the health policies implemented to contain virus infection and mortality. Simi-

larly, they should account for economic policies’positive and differential impacts

in mitigating household financial stress.

•Policymakers should also systematically integrate such demographic characteris-

tics as age and gender in designing and implementing equity-oriented emer-

gency policy packages while ensuring that these measures do not reinforce

inequalities post-recovery.

INTRODUCTION

As the COVID-19 pandemic has hurt vulnerable populations

disproportionately worldwide (Gaynor & Wilson, 2020;Gray

et al., 2020; Shastry et al., 2022;Yancy,2020), it underscores

the importance of considering social equity in all aspects of

emergency policy design and administration. Without priori-

tizing social equity, governments may adopt ineffectual

Received: 9 April 2022 Revised: 14 April 2023 Accepted: 26 April 2023

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13652

1300 © 2023 American Society for Public Administration. Public Admin Rev. 2023;83:1300–1318.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/puar

emergency policy packages or allocate resources regres-

sively, neglecting those in dire need (Billings et al., 2022;

Emrich et al., 2020; Morrow, 1999; Wright & Merritt, 2020).

Hence governments must design emergency policies with

equity in mind (Gooden et al., 2009; Svara & Brunet, 2020;

Stivers, 2007; cf. Durant & Rosenbloom, 2017).

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, emergency policy and

management scholars have already paid attention to

equity. Some have examined how governments can take

proactive and inclusive action to achieve equitable disaster

planning and recovery (Domingue & Emrich, 2019;Emrich

et al., 2020;Goodenetal.,20 09). Others have evaluated

program design and implementation, focusing on the dif-

ferential impacts of disaster relief programs on various

socioeconomic groups. This body of research has uncov-

ered that disadvantaged groups are often less likely to

receive government funding and assistance during recov-

ery (Billings et al., 2022;Davlasheridze&Miao,2021a,

2021b; Emrich et al., 2020).

These previous studies have improved our knowledge

of the disproportionate burdens some vulnerable popula-

tion groups and communities face in disaster exposure

and recovery. They also help practitioners understand

which programs work and how they vary in effectiveness.

Most of these studies have examined either a particular

policy context (e.g., public housing) or a local disaster set-

ting (e.g., Hurricane Harvey or Katrina). But in the case of

COVID-19, research needs to take a more comprehensive

and global perspective to address the novel challenges

posed by the pandemic. That is, the crisis has affected

nearly everyone globally and for longer than most past

disasters, requiring a new kind of emergency policy

response. These challenges offer many comparative

research opportunities for scholars of emergency policy

and management. Our paper explores such opportunities.

First, while the COVID-19 pandemic demands complex

emergency responses, governments worldwide have

adopted similar public health measures—school closures,

restaurant closures, domestic lockdowns, international

travel restrictions, and mask mandates, and so forth.—and

various economic measures such as wage support, cash

transfers, in-kind transfers, and tax cuts. These measures

were implemented as a broad-based emergency policy

package to balance the tradeoff between two policy

domains: public health and the economy. Research can

compare various policy measures implemented under

these two broader emergency response packages. In con-

trast, no prior studies on emergency policy and manage-

ment have drawn on global-scale data on comprehensive

policy packages (see Kellenberg & Mushfiq Mobarak, 2011;

Kousky, 2014 for an extensive review of previous cross-

national comparative disaster studies).

Next, a critical policy issue during the COVID-19 pan-

demic is who among various demographic groups should

be prioritized to benefit from each component of a com-

prehensive response package. In other words, how can a

government design an emergency policy package to

maximize the bang for the buck while being sensitive to

the characteristics and needs of different target groups?

How can policymakers enhance equity in policy design?

Robust answers to these questions are critical for prepar-

ing for future pandemics.

Third, while implementing similar policy measures,

countries differ in the underlying social protection systems,

which may moderate emergency policy efficacy. By using

novel global data and a comparative research design,

scholars can now identify (1) who benefits (or hurts) more

from a uniform set of emergency policies and (2) the socio-

economic vulnerability conditions under which specific

measures are more efficacious than others. Importantly,

what seems successful in one country may not necessarily

work in another, even for similar target groups, due to dif-

fering economic vulnerabilities. By examining how a coun-

try’s broader social protection system moderates policy

efficacy, researchers and policymakers can gain deeper

insights into equitable emergency policy design.

Using these comparative research opportunities, we

ask which public health measures (Non-Pharmaceutical

Interventions (NPIs)) and economic measures mitigated

or worsened financial stress among citizens during the

COVID-19 crisis. Despite governments’fiscal stimulus and

relief efforts, various media consistently reported that

household financial stress remained widespread years

into the pandemic (Weller, 2020). Worldwide, many

households were financially ill-prepared for the sudden,

unexpected job losses, healthcare emergencies, and

childcare and school closures. Moreover, as the pandemic

has lasted for years, the recurring adoptions of NPIs,

which limit or shut down major economic activities, have

hurt household financial health. Financial struggle creates

severe psychological distress (Weissman et al., 2020) and

physical health problems (Case & Deaton, 2015), and it

may shape policy attitudes and political behavior as much

as partisanship and ideology do (Hacker et al., 2013).

Still, news media often indicated that various eco-

nomic stimulus and relief efforts had mitigated household

financial worries (DeParle, 2020; Weller, 2020). Questions

arise as to which specific measures more strongly

reduced financial stress, if at all. At the same time, public

health policies (i.e., NPIs) likely cause significant distur-

bance in citizens’financial security. Often discussed in

media outlets and empirically examined in some research

(e.g., Egger et al., 2021), this issue has yet to be systemati-

cally examined at the global scale. Considering the eco-

nomic damage wrought by virus progression and the

NPIs and economic measures sequentially rolled out by

governments worldwide, it is essential to evaluate from a

global perspective which policies mitigated or worsened

household financial stress.

Scores of COVID-19 papers have studied the impact of

NPIs on various outcomes, including disease infections and

deaths (e.g., An et al., 2021;Haugetal.,2020; Zheng

et al., 2021), mental health (e.g., Kantor & Kantor, 2020;Tull

et al., 2020), and socioeconomic conditions (e.g., Hamadani

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