Professor Catherine Powell‘s article on COVID-19 and its impact on communities of color was cited in a Forbes article examining the recent findings regarding family life during the pandemic.
The 2020 American Family Survey, Family Life During a Pandemic, has just landed, and it provides both surprising – and unsurprising – insights into how American families are experiencing work, life, and family in the midst of the pandemic.
On issues concerning how economics affected their families, on race and gender, on parenting, and on policy preferences, here are some of the key Survey findings.
First, on economics, almost a third of respondents said they or a partner had experienced a loss of income, and even more reported an employment change. Black and Hispanic families were more likely than white families to report that their financial situation was worse now compared to before the pandemic (p. 19). This is in line with other studies that have shown majorities of Latino, Black, and Native American households facing “serious financial problems” during the pandemic. Indeed, as Fordham Professor Catherine Powell notes, Covid-19 “lays bare underlying structural inequalities facing communities of color.”