Sances Michael W, Campbell Andrea Louise
Temple University.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
J Health Polit Policy Law. 2021 Oct 1;46(5):811-830. doi: 10.1215/03616878-9155991.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused enormous damage to physiological health and economic security, especially among racial and ethnic minorities. We examined downstream effects on mental health, how effects vary by race and ethnicity, and the role of existing state-level social policies in softening the pandemic's impact.
We analyze an online, multi-wave Census Bureau survey fielded to nearly a million respondents between late April and July 2020. The survey includes questions measuring psychological distress as well as indirect measures of experience with the pandemic. We combined these data with state-level measures of COVID-19 cases, lockdown orders, unemployment filings, and safety net policy.
We find significant mental stress among all respondents and a sizeable gap between nonwhite and white respondents. Adjusting for pandemic experiences eliminates this gap. The effect of losing work as a result of the pandemic is slightly offset by state policies such as unemployment benefit size and Medicaid expansion. The magnitude of these offsetting effects is similar across racial/ethnic groups.
The racialized impacts of the pandemic are exacerbated by inequalities in state policy exemplifying structural racism. If the least generous states matched the policies of the most generous, inequalities caused by the pandemic would be diminished.
新冠疫情对生理健康和经济安全造成了巨大破坏，尤其是在少数族裔和种族群体中。我们研究了其对心理健康的下游影响、这些影响如何因种族和族裔而异，以及现有的州级社会政策在减轻疫情影响方面的作用。
我们分析了美国人口普查局在2020年4月下旬至7月期间对近100万受访者进行的一项在线多轮调查。该调查包括测量心理困扰的问题以及对疫情经历的间接测量。我们将这些数据与州级的新冠病例数、封锁令、失业申请数和安全网政策措施相结合。
我们发现所有受访者都存在显著的精神压力，非白人和白人受访者之间存在相当大的差距。对疫情经历进行调整后消除了这一差距。因疫情失去工作的影响会被诸如失业救济规模和医疗补助扩大等州政策略微抵消。这些抵消效应的大小在不同种族/族裔群体中相似。
州政策中的不平等体现了结构性种族主义，这加剧了疫情的种族化影响。如果最吝啬的州能与最慷慨的州采取相同政策，疫情造成的不平等将会减少。
