1.4.5: The Effect of the COVID Crisis

The COVID pandemic was the cause of not only a health crisis but also devastating economic effects. While economic opportunities have historically been different for those of different races, these dual crises had a disproportionate effect on African American families. The disparity of these effects can be traced back to pre-COVID conditions, including lower income, higher unemployment, and greater levels of food and housing insecurity for African American families (Hardy and Logan 2020; Bowen et al. 2021; O’Reilly et al. 2020). At the same time, African Americans suffer from health disparities such as a higher rate of preexisting health conditions (Benitez et al. 2020; Wiemers et al. 2020; Albert et al. 2021). The combined interaction of these effects has contributed to higher COVID-19 mortality rates for African Americans than for white Americans, but COVID will still be only the third leading cause of death for African Americans for that same tim period (APM Research Lab 2020).

From an economic viewpoint, historical discrimination and exclusion from education, housing, and economic opportunities for African Americans has caused an economic gap compared to white Americans that has been widening since the 1950s. African American workers are also more likely to have lower wages, more volatile work schedules, less accumulated wealth, and more volatile income (Gould and Wilson 2020; Hardy et al. 2018; Schneider and Harknett 2019; Ziliak et al. 2011; Darity and Mullen 2020; Emmons et al. 2018; Pfeffer and Killewald 2018; Kraus et al. 2019). These differences appear to be largely due to labor discrimination as African Americans tend to have lower returns from post-secondary education (Bertrand and Mullainathan 2004; Holzer et al. 2006; Bartik and Hershbein 2018). As a result of these differences, African American families were less likely to have the financial means to absorb the economic shock of the pandemic, which may have included adverse events such as layoffs, unemployment, and health crises.

With African American families already at an economic disadvantage from the onset of the pandemic, the type of employment is also a contributing factor for the health and welfare of this population, who are more likely to be employed in low-wage front-line and essential worker positions, including the health care support industry, than their white American counterparts. Therefore, these workers faced a higher likelihood of exposure to COVID. A similar effect applied to Hispanic workers as well (Gould and Wilson 2020).

The consequences for African American families have been devastating and could result in generational long-term losses of wealth and family stability (Alaimo et al. 2001; Brennan et al. 2011; Hardy and Marcotte 2020). In the short term, African American communities suffered from higher rates of COVID cases (Benitez et al. 2020; Jahromi and Hamidianjahromi 2020; Fouad et al. 2020; Yancy 2020; Reyes 2020; Wright and Merritt 2020; Kandil et al. 2020).

Families in these neighborhoods also faced higher rates of food and housing insecurity, including households with children. When schools closed to in-person instruction, these same households faced difficult choices that essentially weighed the cost of unemployment against the cost of possibly affordable but unsafe childcare options. College-age children were faced with the tough decision of suspending their higher education opportunities in favor of working or providing childcare to help support their families. Housing insecurity may be particularly troublesome for these communities as eviction moratoriums and loan forgiveness agreements expired in communities that were economically strained by the pandemic.

All of the conclusions discussed above are the result of care statistical data analyses on very complex and often very large sets of data from multiple sources. Without the aid of the statistical techniques and the data would be far too complex to be analyzed in any informal way. Similarly, without the associated computer algorithms the data would be impossible to collect and aggregate. Statistics and data science are crucial to the large health studies like those mentioned above.