Pandemic Relief Research Articles

Implications of COVID-19 relief packages on livelihoods of rural dwellers in border towns along Southwestern Ghana

The global efforts to curtail the livelihood crises brought about by the eruption of the COVID-19 pandemic witnessed the adoption of livelihood strategies in the form of relief packages. Using a quantitative analytic framework, the article sheds light on recipients’ perspectives on the various government interventions in Ghana, focusing on how socio-economic and political inequalities in Ghana shaped access to pandemic relief support for rural dwellers in border towns in Southwestern Ghana. The findings suggest that, despite the partisan twist, the relief packages positively impacted intended beneficiaries in their short-term income-generation activities. Furthermore, it reduced the vulnerability of rural start-up businesses and brought the establishment of new health facilities to augment the infrastructural development of the area. The article concludes that the pandemic provided insight into how rural communities can better leverage relief packages to improve their livelihood conditions.

Frontline Worker Discretion in the For‐Profit Banking Industry: Lessons From Early Pandemic Relief Programming

ABSTRACTIn April and May 2020, the United States banking industry approved over $650 billion in federal relief funds as part of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). Since then, extensive evidence of discriminatory lending has been revealed by investigative journalism and academic studies. Our study is based on 41 interviews with frontline banking professionals conducted during the days and weeks of the PPP rollout. We find that under the crisis conditions of the pandemic, capped funds in the PPP and built‐in incentives that encouraged certain types of loans, banking employees relied upon the professional norms and logic of the for‐profit sector. We argue that these norms and logics threatened the integrity of the PPP as a public relief programme by applying profit‐oriented priorities to resources marked for universal and fair distribution. Our findings offer new directions for theorising sector‐level differences in street‐level bureaucratic discretion in the context of mixed‐sector collaboration on public service delivery, particularly under conditions of crisis and urgency.

“No room for error”: a qualitative interview study of experiences with health insurance coverage loss and COVID-19 pandemic relief policies among people with asthma

Objectives The COVID-19 pandemic led to unemployment and associated health insurance loss, prompting an unprecedented adoption of emergency policies, including economic relief efforts and health insurance coverage expansion. We sought to understand pandemic-related challenges for people with asthma and how emergency policies served families facing both chronic disease management and health insurance loss. Study design Qualitative interview study. Methods In 2021, we conducted semi-structured telephone interviews with 21 adults who had asthma and lost employment and employer-sponsored health insurance coverage during the COVID-19 pandemic. We used thematic analysis to assess how health and economic policies affected participants’ ability to access care and manage their asthma. Results Participants reported reduced access to care, as well as worry about heightened susceptibility to COVID-19 due to their asthma. While insurance loss exacerbated these challenges, participants indicated that economic relief efforts, including direct stimulus payments, helped them afford needed asthma care. Participants were more critical of enhancements to existing coverage policies such as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplace and Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) due to difficulty understanding, accessing, and affording such coverage. Conclusions Our findings underscore that people affected by asthma and health insurance loss benefit from policies that provide flexible and easy-to-use assistance, such as direct payments, for meeting the diverse challenges posed by living with a chronic disease. Although policies that expand health insurance coverage are critical, more attention is needed to help people with chronic conditions access these programs in a timely way.

Compensation and Staffing Challenges in Child Care: Statewide Evidence from Pandemic Relief Applications

Abstract Child care teachers support young children's learning and development and parents’ ability to work. However, they earn far less and turn over at far higher rates than K–12 teachers. COVID-19 exacerbated staffing challenges, and the child care workforce was 5.9 percent smaller in January 2023 than in January 2020. While low compensation likely drives turnover in early childhood education, there is relatively little large-scale evidence on the link between compensation and staffing challenges. We summarize the limited pre-pandemic evidence and use pandemic-era data from 90 percent of publicly funded child care centers in Louisiana to describe the relationship between sites’ compensation and staffing challenges. In October 2022, 15 percent of centers’ lead teacher positions were unfilled—nearly quadruple the 4 percent national vacancy rate for public school teachers. Of centers with any vacancies or hires in the past six months, 65 percent turned families away and 84 percent hired less-experienced or -qualified teachers than desired due to staffing challenges. Centers with higher wages were significantly less likely to report staffing challenges, turn families away, and hire less-experienced teachers, after controlling for center characteristics and region. Our findings and prior evidence suggest that wage increases are promising for stabilizing the child care workforce.

Pandemic-related challenges accessing food and primary healthcare among sex workers during the COVID-19 pandemic: findings from a community-based cohort in Vancouver, Canada

IntroductionGlobally, the COVID-19 pandemic upended healthcare services and created economic vulnerability for many. Criminalization of sex work meant sex workers were largely ineligible for Canada’s government-based financial pandemic relief, the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit. Sex workers’ loss of income and inability to access financial support services during the pandemic resulted in many unable to pay rent or mortgage, and in need of assistance with basic needs items including food. Little is known about the unique experiences of sex workers who faced challenges in accessing food during the pandemic and its impact on healthcare access. Thus, we aimed to identify the association between pandemic-related challenges accessing food and primary healthcare among sex workers.MethodsProspective data were drawn from a cohort of women sex workers in Vancouver, Canada (An Evaluation of Sex Workers’ Health Access, AESHA; 2010-present). Data were collected via questionnaires administered bi-annually from October 2020-August 2021. We used univariate and multivariable logistic regression with generalized estimating equations to assess the association between pandemic-related challenges accessing food and challenges accessing primary healthcare over the study period.ResultsOf 170 participants, 41% experienced pandemic-related challenges in accessing food and 26% reported challenges accessing healthcare. Median age was 45 years (IQR:36–53), 56% were of Indigenous ancestry, 86% experienced intimate partner violence in the last six months, and 62% reported non-injection substance use in the last six months. Experiencing pandemic-related challenges accessing food was positively associated with challenges accessing primary healthcare (Adjusted Odds Ratio: 1.99, 95% Confidence Interval: 1.02–3.88) after adjustment for confounders.ConclusionsFindings provide insight about the potential role community-based healthcare delivery settings (e.g., community clinics) can play in ameliorating access to basic needs such as food among those who are highly marginalized. Future pandemic response efforts should also take the most marginalized populations’ needs into consideration by establishing strategies to ensure continuity of essential services providing food and other basic needs. Lastly, policies are needed establishing basic income support and improve access to food resources for marginalized women in times of crisis.

Nowhere Else to Go: Housing Insecurity in a Hispanic‐Majority Rural County During the COVID‐19 Pandemic☆

AbstractNorthern New Mexico was uniquely vulnerable to the COVID‐19 pandemic and its fallout. Its Hispanic majority, aging population, and decreased access to healthcare put many of the communities in this area of the United States at risk. Taos County was particularly at increased risk of impact from COVID‐19. The county was also more vulnerable to the economic consequences of a pandemic due to reliance on tourism; this meant major impacts for individual households. As unemployment and poverty increased—and pandemic relief program rollouts floundered—the consequences meant precarity for many families. One of the most visible impacts of the pandemic was the inability to access affordable housing. This paper, based on 58 in‐depth interviews and 5 months of participant observation, explores experiences of homelessness and housing insecurity among an already vulnerable population during the pandemic, illustrating the ways in which many people struggled. Importantly, this paper explores differences in patterns of housing insecurity among rural White and rural Hispanic participants during the COVID‐19 pandemic. In addition, this paper advocates the importance of looking at nuanced patterns of dealing with housing precarity in the rural setting as the ways in which different populations cope impact the forms of help that are needed when housing becomes a problem.

Federal Pandemic Relief and Academic Recovery

Federal Pandemic Relief and Academic Recovery

Pandemic relief spending by New York local governments

COVID-19 federal government funding, especially the State and Local Fiscal Relief Funds (SLFRF) from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), passed in 2021, encouraged communities to invest in infrastructure, resilience and equity. US community development funding has been on a competitive basis the past 40 years, but the American Rescue Plan (ARPA) changed that by providing funds to every local government in the US. A history of austerity since the Great Recession may limit the ability and capacity of local governments to use ARPA funds for transformative change. We surveyed local officials in New York State in late 2021 and early 2022 regarding how they planned to spend their ARPA funds. We model differences between rural and urban governments. Rural governments were more likely to hire expert consultants, develop ARPA specific plans, and participate in regional collaboration. Regression models show these community capacity features also led to more resilience-related investments. The ARPA program wanted local governments to be transformative in addressing equity, and our models find community engagement is key to such transformative change. To move from resilience to transformation requires both community capacity and citizen engagement.

Access Denied: Sex workers’ exclusion from COVID-19 relief in the United States

This short article provides an overview of the US government’s response to COVID-19 and the exclusion of sex workers from pandemic relief. It details the impacts of this exclusion, including how sex workers and advocates were forced to prioritise emergency service provision over longer-term policy goals. The article concludes that the exclusion of sex workers from COVID-19 relief is part of the US government’s broader history of discriminating against people involved in the sex trades and hindering advancements in policies to protect sex workers’ human rights.

The Role Of Indonesia's Defense Diplomacy In Supporting Cooperation With China To Overcome Covid-19 Pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic left many nations in a dilemma to protect their respective countries. Indonesia carried out diplomacy with various countries that had the capability to help Indonesia overcome the pandemic through various diplomatic channels, one of which was China, even though it closed itself at the start of the pandemic. The involvement of military in carrying out the action shows the role of defense diplomacy in the cooperation between Indonesia and China to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. The problem being studied is the role of Indonesia's defense diplomacy in supporting Indonesia-China cooperation in overcoming the pandemic; along with the contributing and inhibiting factors in the cooperation. The aim of the research is to analyze the role of Indonesian defense diplomacy in Indonesia-China cooperation along with the contributing and inhibiting factors in this cooperation. The research method used is qualitative method. Primary data was obtained through individual interviews and secondary data through library research. The results revealed that Indonesia's defense diplomacy played a role in supporting the activities of the Ministry of Health, and supporting the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The contributing factors are China's help during the pandemic and military utilization in pandemic relief. The inhibiting factors are the prevalence of misinformation, the lack of preparedness in dealing with health threats, and the facilities, personnel and communication that are not yet optimal.

Impact of the First Year of the COVID-19 on Unmet Healthcare Need among New York City Adults: a Universal Healthcare Experiment.

We examined the impact of the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic on unmet healthcare need among New Yorkers and potential differences by race/ethnicity and health insurance. Data from the Community Health Survey, collected in 2018, 2019, and 2020, were merged to compare unmet healthcare need within the past 12 months during the pandemic versus the 2 years prior to 2020. Univariate and multivariable logistic regression models evaluated change in unmet healthcare need overall, and we assessed whether race/ethnicity or health insurance status modified the association. Overall, 12% of New Yorkers (N = 27,660) experienced unmet healthcare during the 3-year period. In univariate and multivariable models, the first year of the pandemic (2020) was not associated with change in unmet healthcare need compared with 2018-2019 (OR = 1.04, p = 0.548; OR = 1.03, p = 0.699, respectively). There was no statistically significant interaction between calendar year and race/ethnicity, but there was significant interaction with health insurance status (interaction p = 0.009). Stratifying on health insurance status, those uninsured had borderline significant lower odds of experiencingunmet healthcare need during 2020 compared to the 2 years prior (OR = 0.72, p = 0.051) while those with insurance had a slight increase that was not significant (OR = 1.12, p = 0.143). Unmet healthcare need among New Yorkers during the first year of the pandemic did not differ significantly from 2018-2019. Federal pandemic relief funding, which offered no-cost COVID-19 testing and care to all, irrespective of health insurance or legal status, may have helped equalized access to healthcare.

Terra Incognita: California Transit Agency Perspectives on Demand, Service, and Finance in the Age of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic upended transit use, finance, and management. To investigate these effects two years into the pandemic, we conducted 21 semi-structured interviews with senior managers at transit agencies in the most populous U.S. state, California. We found that the pandemic generated many operational and managerial challenges for transit agencies. Ridership plummeted, then slowly recovered, but is still well below pre-pandemic levels at most agencies. Commuter trips to and from major job centers were especially slow to return. In response to decreased demand, public health concerns, and uncertain finances, many agencies cut services and spending early on. As a result, fare revenues declined, in some cases precipitously. However, federal pandemic relief funds proved essential in filling budgetary gaps, stabilizing finances, preventing layoffs, and maintaining services. Other transit subsidies mostly bounced back robustly. Our interviews suggest that, though California transit agencies experimented with free fares, few fareless programs were made permanent. Their challenges include considerable uncertainty associated with future travel demand, looming financial shortfalls at systems that formerly had high farebox recovery and are still drawing on federal pandemic funds to backfill their fare revenue losses, and protracted labor shortages of drivers and mechanics that are preventing many systems from providing desired levels of service.

Crowdfunding marine and coastal protected areas: Reducing the revenue gap and financial vulnerabilities revealed by COVID-19

Economics provides a useful conceptual framework from which to consider the great variety of welfare improving values created and stewarded by marine and coastal protected areas. Many marine and coastal protected areas have been dependent upon international tourism revenues to cover operating expenses and fuel economic development in relatively undiversified island economies. The COVID-19 pandemic drastically reduced the flow of international tourism dollars. We find crowdfunding is a promising strategy to capture nonuse value from altruistic and philanthropic donations of beneficiaries worldwide and a means to diversify finance streams for protected area management. BIOFIN adapted the UNDP crowdfunding methodology to address an urgent and critical need for short term funding to support protected areas at marine and coastal sites in Belize, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Philippines, and Thailand that resulted in more than $2 million in charitable donations across the five campaigns in 2020-2. A common methodological approach to campaign design and implementation facilitated a comparative reflection and analysis of the five campaigns by their managers, the authors of this paper. The five BIOFIN crowdfunding campaigns varied in terms of specific need addressed, global reputation of the site, financial scale and geopolitical scope, primary sources and degree of success in attracting donations and distributing funds, leverage and staying power, and traceable biodiversity outcomes. As the first review of pandemic relief crowdfunding campaigns for marine and coastal protected areas, we hope it can serve to begin to synthesize and transfer lessons learnt to additional locations and ecosystems in need.

Resilient product and production adaptation in a large‐scale disaster: Does it pay off?

AbstractPandemic outbreaks can disrupt firms’ normal operations, so they demand a resilient response. Firms can combine social responsibility initiatives with resilient responses by reconfiguring their production resources for pandemic relief. It remains unclear, however, whether pandemic‐relieving product adaptation (in short, PRPA) improves financial performance. We draw on stakeholder theory to analyze the effect of a PRPA strategy on the stock returns of US‐listed manufacturing firms during the COVID‐19 pandemic—the most enduring and large‐scale pandemic in recent history. The results reveal that the stock market reacts more positively to PRPA under severe pandemic circumstances and for firms with low political connectedness, low media coverage, and/or more unique production technology. The findings offer important implications for operations theory and practice.

Entropy in the “entrepot”: examining the challenges of relief supply chains during COVID-19 pandemic relief item distribution operation-2020 in Uganda

Background: The study focuses on the challenges encountered during the distribution of food and face-mask items during the first COVID-19 lock-down by various relief supply chain actors. Methods: Data were collected from forty (40) relief actors through online (via Zoom and telephones) and face-to-face interviews, between January 2021 to March 2021. Data was coded based on per-determined themes after which it was further processed using Atlas ti. v7.57 to generate patterns. Results: The study established challenges related to needs identification, procurement, warehousing, transportation, handling, beneficiary verification, and last-mile distribution. Additionally, the media and politics coupled with the emergence of new actors and governance issues were part of the challenges identified. Conclusions: The identified challenges were internal and external to the relief supply chain; hence actors could have control over some while others were beyond their control. The findings could inform practitioners and policymakers on what challenges are likely to affect their operations, especially during a pandemic, and design appropriate coping mechanisms.

Implications of Student Loan COVID-19 Pandemic Relief Measures for Families with Children

The initial years of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic fallout likely posed particular financial strain on U.S. households with children, who faced income disruptions from widespread jobs and hours cuts in addition to new childcare and instruction demands. One common expense for many such households is their student loan payment. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act included provisions to curb the impacts of these payments, which have been extended several times. These measures were not targeted and thus applied independent of need. This chapter analyzes two nationally representative datasets and finds: 1) families with children were more likely to benefit from pandemic student loan relief than those without children, but this relief was concentrated among higher-income and White families and 2) there were larger improvements in overall credit health and an increased use of other credit among families with student loan debt that was eligible for relief relative to those with student loan debt that was not.

Case Study: Impact of Regulatory Restrictions and Tax Policy on Breakeven Analysis and Risk Management

The objective of this case study is to enable students to analyze the financial impact of an unexpected catastrophic event on a retail business and how the strategic operational decisions made in response to regulatory restrictions and changes in tax policy impact the business’s risk tolerance and breakeven analysis. To provide students with a context for comparison, this case study provides students with the opportunity to analyze the financial statements of a retail business prior to the occurrence of an unexpected catastrophic event, how the catastrophic event impacted revenue and profitability, and how the risk reduction strategies the business employed contained the adverse impact of the factors brought on by that catastrophic event on breakeven. This case study addresses a core gap in the body of knowledge by analyzing a business in three distinct stages of the business life cycle: (1) in the start-up phase; (2) in pre-crisis operations mode; and (3) in crisis mode confronted with an unexpected catastrophic event amidst governmental shutdowns, state and federal regulatory restrictions, and emergency changes to the tax policy. Examining a fictitious restaurant (a composite of the sales statistics of three actual restaurants located in Long Island, New York from 2019 to 2021) in operation for one year prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, students are given the opportunity to think critically about how strategic operational decisions made to generate sales, to minimize risk, to comply with mandated state government policy, and to take advantage of federal tax relief policy, collectively changed the financial projections and impacted the breakeven analysis of that business. Students are able to evaluate business start-up costs, first year (pre-pandemic) sales and costs, and second year (during pandemic) sales and costs of a retail business. Students then evaluate how the United States’ federal PPP relief loan program, along with other pandemic relief programs for businesses and individuals, impacted profitability and business strategy. Students also assess risk, risk tolerance, and how the strategies employed to minimize risk impact a business. The motivation for this case study is to provide students with an illustrative example of an entity at various stages of the business life cycle, to explore the surrounding context of the impact of external environmental events, and to identify the effects of strategic operational responses to the various regulatory changes that were brought on by a catastrophic event. This case study is designed for use in courses that study revenue projection, tax, internal controls, breakeven analysis, and risk management. Teaching Note: While this case study uses a restaurant as a model, prior understanding of the restaurant industry is not necessary. Any student or instructor can use their practical knowledge and experience as a consumer to adequately analyze the issues presented.

Changes in Food Security, Healthfulness, and Access During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic: Results From a National United States Survey

BackgroundCoronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) disrupted access to food and adequate nutrition and the types of foods consumed. However, little empiric data exists on the changes in American’s food and nutrition habits 2 y into the pandemic. ObjectivesTo assess current and altered food choices ∼2 y into the COVID-19 pandemic in the months after historic public pandemic relief. MethodsA national sample of 1878 United States adults balanced by age, sex, race/ethnicity, and income completed a one-time, online, semi-quantitative, 44-item questionnaire in Fall 2021 asking about the demographics, COVID-19 food choice changes (including free-text), and consumer priorities. This analysis investigates COVID-19 impacts on food security, healthfulness, and access. ResultsMore than 35% of respondents reported improved food security and >45% reported improved food healthfulness compared with prepandemic status. Improvement was reported in more than 30% of Black/African-American and Hispanic/Latinx adults, adults with lower annual income, and female sex, despite over 75% reporting reduced choice of where to eat or buy food. The pandemic offered occasion for many to improve diet, but a similar number expressed that the pandemic destabilized healthy habits. ConclusionsOur novel findings suggest that by late 2021, most Americans had improved food security and food choice healthfulness, despite reduced access to food service and retail, although with worsening among a meaningful proportion of Americans as well as heterogeneity in these changes. Vigorous federal, state, city, and community responses to the pandemic may have played a role in improving the food security and food choice healthfulness during the COVID-19 pandemic. Health crises differently impact health behaviors, but when accompanied by vigorous civic and community response, food security, and food healthfulness can be fortified.

Did Pandemic Relief Fraud Inflate House Prices?

Did Pandemic Relief Fraud Inflate House Prices?

Electoral Politics of Disaster: how earthquake and pandemic relief was used to earn votes

AbstractDisasters can be good for incumbent governments. Amidst an emergency, budgets can be revised and reallocated in a hurry, framing the government as a ‘saviour,’ issuing contracts to the government’s business clientele and/or prioritising the electoral base more than the victims. Thus elected officials can curry favour with voters and increase their chances of retaining their seats. We examine this claim in the context of Albania, a middle-income country with weak public institutions. We show that the relief for two calamities, a destructive earthquake in 2019 and the Covid-19 pandemic, was used by the government to mobilise votes, thereby increasing the likelihood of electoral success in 2021. Both earthquake relief funding and Covid-19 vaccination rates spiked right before the elections only to drop soon afterwards. This phenomenon, known as the Electoral Politics of Disaster (EPD), poses a risk for the national economy, public health, spatial planning and democracy.