By Cliff Montgomery – Dec. 31st, 2020
Covid-19, also known as the coronavirus, has been hard on all of us. But the pandemic’s economic fallout has been harder on lower-income Americans, according to a Pew Research Center study released in September.
The Pew Center “conducted this study to understand Americans’ assessments of their personal financial situation … caused by the coronavirus outbreak,” according to the report.
Pew “surveyed 13,200 U.S. adults in August 2020” to determine the continuing economic effects of the coronavirus.
“Everyone who took part is a member of Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP),” declared the study, “an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses.”
“The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories,” added the Pew report.
A note on Pew’s terminology: For some reason, Pew has decided that “references to college graduates or people with a college degree [should only] comprise those with a bachelor’s degree or more,” while the phrase ‘some college’ was used to include “those with an associate degree and those who attended college but did not obtain a degree,” according to the study.
Also, the term ‘middle income’ is defined by Pew “as two-thirds to double the median annual family income for panelists on the American Trends Panel,” while “ ‘lower income’ falls below that range – ‘upper income’ falls above it,” declared the report.
So what did Pew discover?
A “Pew Research Center survey finds that, overall, one-in-four adults have had trouble paying their bills since the coronavirus outbreak started,” while “a third have dipped into savings or retirement accounts to make ends meet,” the study revealed.
Not only that, but “about one-in-six have borrowed money from friends or family or gotten food from a food bank,” added the Pew report.
“These types of experiences continue to be more common among adults with lower incomes, those without a college degree and Black and Hispanic Americans,” the Pew study stated frankly.
“Among lower-income adults, 46% say they have had trouble paying their bills since the pandemic started,” the study continued, “and roughly one third (32%) say it’s been hard for them to make rent or mortgage payments.”
“About one-in-five or fewer middle-income adults have faced these challenges, and the shares are substantially smaller for those in the upper-income tier,” Pew declared.
It’s when the study looks harder into the data that the economic disparities exposed by the virus fallout become crystal clear.
“Lower-income adults continue to be the most affected by coronavirus-related job loss or pay cuts,” said the Pew study. “Some 47% of those with lower incomes say they or someone in their household has had these experiences,” added the report, “compared with 42% of those with middle incomes and 32% of upper-income adults.”
“These experiences also vary by age,” declared the Pew study. The analysis revealed that “adults younger than 30 [are] more likely” to state that “they or someone else in their household has been laid off or taken a pay cut because of the outbreak.” The Pew report added that “54% of adults ages 18 to 29 say their household has had one or both of these experiences,” while “48% of those ages 30 to 49” acknowledged such problems.
Those numbers fell to “40% [for] those 50 to 64,” and revealed a relatively mild “21% of adults ages 65 and older” as having such financial issues, according to the study.
The Pew study also made clear that race has been a factor in economic hardship during the virus.
“Among Hispanic Americans, 53% say they or someone else in their household have either been laid off or taken a pay cut” due to the economic fallout from Covid-19. Asian Americans also have been hard-hit, with 47% saying that “they or someone else in their household has been laid off or taken a pay cut because of the outbreak,” according to Pew.
These percentages are “larger than the shares of White (38%) and Black (43%) adults who say the same,” declared the report.
