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Dear John,
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, passed by Congress in March 2020, provided various types of temporary financial assistance to millions of Americans.
The November
2022 issue of Health Affairs features a collection of articles exploring the health effects of economic security policies, some funded by CARES, while other articles examine COVID-19 more broadly.
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Economic Security
Alina Schnake-Mahl and coauthors find that after they controlled for demographic differences, cities with paid sick leave policies had a COVID-19 vaccination coverage rate 17 percent higher than the rates in cities without these policies.
Disparities in vaccination rates between less and more vulnerable neighborhoods were also smaller in cities with paid sick leave policies.
Analyzing data from the period 2017–21, Kristen Harknett and Daniel Schneider determine that paid sick leave laws narrow gender gaps in access to leave for service-sector workers.
"In the absence of a [paid sick leave] law, 43 percent of men and 38 percent of women reported access to paid sick leave," they find. However, if these laws are present, up to 70 percent of men and 69 percent of women are covered.
Based on national data from 2020, Abdinasir Ali and George Wehby find "some evidence that state eviction moratoriums were associated with an improvement in mental health, based on a decline in number of days not in good mental health in the past thirty, and in the likelihood of reporting fourteen or more such days."
In response to financial hardship caused by the
COVID-19 crisis, many states expanded access to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
Emily Dore and coauthors find that "providing emergency cash benefits to people not already participating in TANF, waiving work requirements, waiving or pausing sanctions, and automatically recertifying benefits" are associated with reductions of self-reported mentally and physically unhealthy days among likely TANF participants, relative to prepandemic levels.
Based on survey data from hourly workers in the retail, food service, and hotel sectors in Philadelphia, Elizabeth Ananat and coauthors find that Black and Hispanic workers are just as likely as White workers to experience material and mental hardship when laid off and to have that hardship relieved if they receive unemployment insurance (UI) benefits.
However, they are less likely to receive UI, which "means that increasing equity in access to the program could help reduce the disparate effects of job loss on non-White workers and related racial health disparities."
The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 expanded the Child Tax Credit (CTC), a federal credit for qualifying families.
Using survey data from the period 2017–21, Benjamin Glasner and colleagues find no evidence that the temporarily expanded CTC "translated into improved subjective well-being or mental health" for recipients, even among lower-income families and racially and ethnically minoritized groups, for whom the net benefit of the credit was larger.
Examining supermarket transaction data, Caitlin Lowery and coauthors find that Healthy Helping, a short-term fruit and vegetable incentive program implemented in North Carolina during the pandemic, led to enrollees spending more on fruit, vegetables, nuts, and legumes than similar shoppers not enrolled in the program.
Christopher Ruhm examines the underlying causes of changes in US mortality during the first year of the pandemic and
concludes that the effects of the recession, which reduced death rates, partially offset the pandemic effect for most groups and causes.
An accompanying Perspective by Ellen Meara focuses on drug overdoses, and one by Steven Woolf
discusses the pandemic’s long-term consequences.
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COVID-19
Neal Marquez and coauthors determine that during the first year of the pandemic, COVID-19 mortality rates for Black and Hispanic people in Texas prisons were 1.61 and 2.12 times higher, respectively, than for White people.
In March 2020 the US began immediately expelling certain immigrants at or near the southern border on public health grounds. Joseph Nwadiuko and Arturo Vargas Bustamante examine border crossing and COVID-19 case data and conclude that the "short-term inflow of immigrants to the US through the Southwest border or as agricultural guest workers was weakly correlated with COVID-19 infections, if at all, during March 2020–December 2021."
Shira Fischer and colleagues determine that the share of patients willing to engage in video telehealth increased from 50.8
percent in February 2019 to 62.2 percent in March 2021, and "increases in willingness were especially pronounced among Black adults and adults with lower educational attainment."
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Acknowledgments
Health Affairs thanks Rita Hamad of the University of California San Francisco for serving as adviser on the economic security papers. We also thank the Blue Shield of California Foundation and the Episcopal Health Foundation for their financial support.
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As part of the launch of this month's issue exploring the health impacts of economic security policies that were enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic, we will be hosting a free, virtual briefing tomorrow at which selected authors and experts will present their work and engage in discussions on these issues.
Join us at 2:00 PM ET tomorrow, and register for additional events this month:
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This month, we'll feature authors from the
November issue discussing topics like the rise of cross-market hospital systems, and racial and ethnic disparities in pandemic-era unemployment insurance access.
Recently, Christopher Ruhm joined A Health Podyssey to discuss his research analyzing the mortality effects of the COVID-19
pandemic and the related economic recession.
On Health Affairs This Week, our editors discuss some of the most pressing health policy news. In a recent episode, Leslie Erdelack and Jessica Bylander discussed the FDA's efforts to pull the pregnancy drug Makena from the market and the implications for drug policy.
Check out our podcasts, and subscribe on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you prefer to listen.
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About Health Affairs
Health Affairs is the leading peer-reviewed journal at the intersection of health, health care, and policy. Published monthly by Project HOPE, the journal is available in print and online. Late-breaking
content is also found through healthaffairs.org, Health Affairs Today, and Health Affairs Sunday Update.
Project HOPE is a global health and humanitarian relief organization that places power in the hands of local health care workers to save lives across the globe. Project HOPE has published Health Affairs since 1981.
Copyright © Project HOPE: The People-to-People Health Foundation, Inc.
Health Affairs, 1220 19th Street, NW, Suite 800, Washington, DC 20036, United States
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