COVID-19’s
SOCIAL IMPACT
Kinga Makovi and Malte Reichelt, assistant professors of the social research and public policy program at NYU Abu Dhabi, are working with a network of academics to study the immediate, short, and long-term social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US, Germany, and Singapore.
Funded by the COVID-19 Facilitator Research Fund at NYUAD, and supported by the Research Center for Interacting Urban Networks (CITIES), the overarching goal of the research is to study a diversity of outcomes across contexts that are culturally diverse, and have seen different impact and policy responses to the pandemic.
The two NYUAD professors, along with colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Maryland, are building a panel of nationally representative samples of the population in these three countries. The team will follow some 5,000 respondents’ experiences and outcomes for at least 12 months.
“The questions that we’re trying to answer in this research, such as how people’s personal networks change, and in turn how this helps or hinders economic recovery of families, cannot be answered unless you can follow people over time,” said Makovi.
The study will look to monitor and track changes in social network composition, labor-market outcomes, social norms, specifically relating to what people believe is socially-beneficial behavior, and measures of cooperation in communities.
As part of the initial survey, Makovi has already gleaned some interesting information about participants' behavior in regards to the coronavirus. Specifically, and perhaps bizarrely, how political identity plays a role.
“We’re looking at if men and women were affected differently in their employment status. What we’re seeing is that women were more affected in terms of experiencing unemployment, working fewer hours, and working from home.”
Malte Reichelt,
assistant professor, social research and public policy
“What is interesting from the initial findings is that many of the responses to the questions regarding COVID-19 would be tied to political ideology. As wild as it may sound, health shouldn’t be a political issue but it apparently is,” she said.
Responses tied to behavior on how individuals plan on managing information about their personal health, and their willingness to vaccinate themselves to avoid contracting COVID-19, should a vaccine become available correlated to their political stances. As the survey goes on, the researchers are hoping to better understand how socio-economic standing and ideology relates to health and other social behaviors related to COVID-19. The researchers will continue to monitor the respondents over the next year, checking in at pivotal periods in the respective countries such as the month which led up to the US presidential election, in which data was collected in the US.
Reichelt and Makovi are working on exploring gender inequalities during the pandemic and specifically looking at how lockdown policies impacted gender relations. They found that women were more impacted in their employment status than men, potentially impacting gender inequality for years to come.
“We’re looking at if men and women were affected differently in their employment status. What we’re seeing is that women were more affected in terms of experiencing unemployment, working fewer hours, and working from home,” Reichelt said. Women, they found, who transitioned to unemployment also displayed more traditional gender attitudes whereas men who transitioned were found to be more egalitarian.
The larger project will continue to provide data for the academics involved to look at how the pandemic influenced socio-economic standing. Some of the research is expected to be long term and will continue to provide insight for years down the line.
The team will continue to collect data from respondents next year to collate information and track the trajectory of respondents over time.
COVID-19's Social Impact / Words: Naser Al Wasmi / Editor: Abigail Kelly
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