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The Income and Consumption Effects of COVID‐19 and the Role of Public Policy *
Author(s) -
Piyapromdee Suphanit,
Spittal Peter
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
fiscal studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.63
H-Index - 40
eISSN - 1475-5890
pISSN - 0143-5671
DOI - 10.1111/1475-5890.12252
Subject(s) - earnings , consumption (sociology) , economics , covid-19 , payment , labour economics , empirical evidence , demographic economics , distribution (mathematics) , public economics , finance , medicine , mathematical analysis , social science , philosophy , mathematics , disease , pathology , epistemology , sociology , infectious disease (medical specialty)
We provide empirical evidence on the labour market impacts of COVID‐19 in the UK and assess the effectiveness of mitigation policies. We estimate the relationship between employment outcomes and occupational and industrial characteristics and assess the effects on consumption. Seventy per cent of households in the bottom fifth of the earnings distribution hold insufficient assets to maintain current spending for more than one week. We compare the effectiveness of the UK's Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and of Economic Impact Payments in the US. The EIPs are more effective at mitigating consumption reductions as they have full coverage, depend on household structure and are higher for low‐income workers.