Understanding the Disproportionate Impacts of COVID-19 on Low-Income, Predominately Minority Communities

This study proposes to collect an additional wave of survey data from an existing longitudinal cohort (N=400) of low-income New Haven residents to analyze the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on their physical and mental health and socioeconomic well-being. In addition, this study will examine the impacts of prevention guidelines (e.g. social distancing, household isolation) and policies at both the federal and local levels (e.g. closing of all but essential services, stimulus checks, housing of homeless) aimed at reducing the vulnerability to and effects of the pandemic. This study provides an opportunity to better understand some of the specific mechanisms through which these social and economic inequalities produce pandemic-related outcomes. It can also suggest how these vulnerable populations have both benefited from and been harmed by policies aimed at preventing the spread of the coronavirus and at reducing the potential socio-economic hardships (and further inequities) those policies may produce.