Giving Compass' Take:

• Alix Gould-Werth and Raksha Kopparam detail the impact of coronavirus on low-wage families and why we're not doing enough to minimize it.

• How can you help families survive the economic effects of coronavirus? What can we do to reduce long-term implications and protect future generations?

• Learn more about how to get involved.

As the effects of the new coronavirus sweep through the U.S. economy, low-wage workers are hit first and hardest. Today, economist Liz Ananat at Barnard College and psychologist Anna Gassman-Pines at Duke University released new analyses drawing from daily diary surveys conducted in a typical large U.S. city between February 20 and March 24. Each day, they surveyed 690 retail, food, and hospitality workers with young children and they also conducted a one-time survey on the impact of the new coronavirus with a subsample of 405 respondents. Their results show how the public health crisis is unfolding and how policy has not yet softened its economic and psychological blow.

March was the first month in which the economic shocks from the coronavirus pandemic reverberated to the city under study. During this month, more than two-thirds of the workers surveyed found themselves working less, with more than 40 percent experiencing layoffs.

As work hours dwindled, parents slept poorly. They reported feeling fretful, angry, irritable, anxious, or depressed all day long. Their children increasingly demonstrated uncooperative behavior.

The experience of parents and their children is deeply intertwined. As parents’ moods suffered, they reported that their young sons and daughters demonstrated uncooperative behavior, which, for children, is a harbinger of deeper psychological distress.

Decreases in work hours are accompanied by falls in income. Nearly two-thirds of respondents reported that their income fell following the onset of the coronavirus crisis. One-third reported severe income declines. These workers’ incomes were now less than half of what they had been in normal times.

Over the past several weeks, policymakers have recognized that low-income families are suffering and have stepped up to provide supports to these families, but the supports won’t be effective at ameliorating the distress of families—or stabilizing the economy—if workers don’t access them.

Read the full article about the impact of coronavirus on low-wage families by Alix Gould-Werth and Raksha Kopparam at Equitable Growth.