Xiaowei Xu

At this event, IFS researchers discussed how Covid-19 has interacted with existing inequalities and consider the potential long-term legacy of the pandemic on inequality.

Much of the debate about the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, our responses to it, and the longer-term legacy that it will leave has quickly become a discussion about various forms of inequality.

Mental health in the UK worsened substantially as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic – by 8.1% on average and by much more for young adults and for women which are groups that already had lower levels of mental health before Covid-19.

Our research uses up to date real time data from DWP’s Find a Job website to track vacancy levels across all sectors of the economy and regions of the country.

Council tax bands in Wales are based on property values in April 2003 – 17 years ago. That is more up to date than in England and Scotland, where they are based on values in April 1991 (almost 30 years ago!). But it is still enough time for the relative values of different properties to change significantly: for example, official estimates suggest that while average prices had doubled since 2003 across Wales as a whole by the end of 2019, those in Blaenau Gwent had risen 171% compared with just 77% in Wrexham.

The lockdown in response to the Covid-19 pandemic has effectively shut down a number of sectors. We find that young people, women and low-earners are the most affected.

The self-employed are more exposed to the large falls in demand resulting from social distancing measures during the coronavirus pandemic and more likely to be living in poverty than employees.

There is a clear need to temporarily reallocate some workers but this should be balanced with the need to have the economy ready to quickly resume ‘business as usual’ once the COVID-19 crisis is over.