Helping Those Who Need It Most: The Unequal Impact of COVID-19 and Policy Responses on Observed Infection Rates and Economic Status

Macroeconomic forecasts predict a 3 to 35 percent drop in UK GDP from the COVID-19 crisis. But there has been little forecasting of how COVID-19 and the government's emergency measures will affect economic inequality, and how inequality affects the course of the epidemic. Moreover, most policies only take into account the negative economic consequences from the lockdown, while people's private fear of infection also has a direct impact on inequality between socioeconomic groups. We construct an epidemiology-economics hybrid model that captures the discrepancy between observed and true infection/mortality rates, and emphasize the disproportionate health and economic risk faced by low-wage workers and the self-employed. We differentiate voluntary from enforced social distancing, and quarantines from lockdowns. The model can predict how economic and health inequality evolve with and without government interventions, and allows for a comparison with the US and Korea, which implemented vastly different economic and public health interventions.