Introduction: The COVID-19 Shock to Our Deep Inequities: How to Mitigate the Impact

• Author: Michal Grinstein-Weiss,Carol Graham
• DOI: 10.1177/00027162211069426
• Published date: 01 November 2021
• Date: 01 November 2021

ANNALS, AAPSS, 698, November 2021 7

DOI: 10.1177/00027162211069426

Introduction:

The COVID-19

Shock to Our

Deep

Inequities: How

to Mitigate the

Impact

By

CAROL GRAHAM

and

MICHAL GRINSTEIN-WEISS

1069426ANN The Annals of The American AcademyThe Covid-19 Shock to Our Deep Inequities

research-article2021

Keywords: COVID; inequality; public health; racial

differences; vulnerability

The COVID-19 pandemic affected nearly

every aspect of household health, as well as

the social and economic well-being of individu-

als and communities across the United States.

Many in our society have faced and continue to

face unprecedented challenges. Specifically,

the pandemic put a microscope on inequities

such as racial disparities in housing, health

care, and food insecurity, while revealing the

cracks in our safety net, all of which resulted in

a disproportionate impact of the pandemic on

individuals with preexisting socioeconomic dis-

advantages. Minorities in essential jobs, for

example, were much more likely to get infected

with COVID and die from it; and other margin-

alized groups, such as illegal immigrants, were

excluded from government assistance pro-

grams. This special issue of The ANNALS

focuses on how and where the COVID-19 pan-

demic exacerbated preexisting inequalities in

all these areas, as well as on potential strategies

to address or at least mitigate them.

Carol Graham is a senior fellow at Brookings, College

Park Professor at University of Maryland, and a Gallup

senior scientist. She is a world-recognized expert on

well-being economics and has received awards for her

pioneering research and for her books and publications

in Science, Social Science and Medicine, and many

other journals.

Michal Grinstein-Weiss, a leading expert in asset build-

ing and promoting policy solutions for socioeconomic

mobility in the United States and internationally, is the

Shanti Khinduka Distinguished Professor at the Brown

School, director of the Social Policy Institute at

Washington University in St. Louis, and a nonresident

senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Correspondence: CGRAHAM@brookings.edu