key: cord-0995920-bl96vl3l
authors: Price, Gregory N.
title: Introduction to the Special Issue: COVID-19 and Its Impact on Racial/Ethnic Groups
date: 2020-11-23
journal: J Econ Race Policy
DOI: 10.1007/s41996-020-00074-x
sha: ea49859e3e7f74263b644209584a8b88ebb8b74f
doc_id: 995920
cord_uid: bl96vl3l

nan

Benitez, Courtmanche, and Yelowitz examine racial and ethnic disparities in confirmed COVID-19 cases across six diverse US cities at the zip code level. Controlling for nonracial/ethnic characteristics, they find evidence that the proportions of Black and Hispanic residents in a ZIP code were associated with higher COVID-19 cases per capita, and the association was even stronger for Hispanic residents. Their findings suggest that the higher death toll of COVID-19 in predominantly Black and Hispanic communities mostly reflects higher case rates, rather than higher fatality rates for confirmed cases. This suggests COVID-19 mitigation policies in the USA should be tailored to recognize the racially/ ethnically disparate rates of COVID-19 infections, relative to associated COVID-19 fatalities.

Gezici and Ozay consider the racialized and gendered effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the probability of being unemployed in the USA. Their findings cast the unemployment effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in discrimination theories based on unexplained gaps after accounting for observable characteristics of women, men, and different races/ ethnicities and their labor market position. Given the presumption that being employed in a job that is "teleworkable" provides some buffer against being unemployed by the COVID-19 pandemic, a key finding is that Black women and Hispanic women still experience a significantly higher probability of losing their jobs compared to White men even if they are employed in industries with highly teleworkable jobs.

Vargas and Sanchez consider the impact COVID-19 had on the well-being of Latino families with respect to employment, self-employment savings, finances, and psychological coping. With descriptive and inferential methods, the report shows evidence that in the USA, Latinos experienced high job loss, business closures, economic stress, and difficulty making housing payments, and postponed educational and healthrelated services to make ends meet. Their findings suggest that to be effective, COVID-19 mitigation policies in the USA should be tailored to recognize the disparate impact the pandemic had on Latino families. I commend all the authors for making their contributions available to the Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy. Hopefully, the contributions featured in this special issue will be viewed as consequential additions to what we know/will know about the causes/consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly the extent to which it has effects conditioned on race and ethnicity. Last but not least, it is hoped that the contributions can inform COVID-19 mitigation policies that break any nexus that exists between COVID-19 infections and disparate outcomes conditioned on race/ethnicity.

A special thanks is extended to all the contributors of articles to this special issue, and to the external referees of each contribution. I also thank Gary A. Hoover, the editor of the Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy, for enabling the special issue.

COVID-19 and inequalities

COVID?19 death rates are higher in rural counties with larger shares of blacks and Hispanics

COVID-19 mortality: a complex interplay of sex, gender and ethnicity

African Americans and COVID-19: beliefs, behaviors and vulnerability to infection

COVID-19, inequality, and social stratification in Africa

Geographies of the COVID-19 pandemic