Missed Credit Card Payments, Payday Loans, Distrust in Government: American Struggle to Bear Pandemic Impacts

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered one of the largest public health and economic crises the U.S. has witnessed in modern history. A team of researchers at the Poverty Lab and the Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation at the University of Chicago in partnership with NORC at the University of Chicago, an independent and non-partisan research institution, has implemented a seven-wave longitudinal survey between April and October 2020. The survey was administered to a representative sample of about 1,000 Americans drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel to learn how the crisis has affected their economic situation, their views about institutions and policies, and their behaviors related to the pandemic. The findings emerging from this study highlight how the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated existing income, gender, and race inequalities, and affected Americans’ trust in institutions, further increasing political divisions.

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