Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2021 Jan:79:101381.
doi: 10.1016/j.eeh.2020.101381. Epub 2020 Nov 3.

Disease, downturns, and wellbeing: Economic history and the long-run impacts of COVID-19

Vellore Arthi, John Parman
Review

Disease, downturns, and wellbeing: Economic history and the long-run impacts of COVID-19

Vellore Arthi et al. Explor Econ Hist. 2021 Jan.

Abstract

How might COVID-19 affect human capital and wellbeing in the long run? The COVID-19 pandemic has already imposed a heavy human cost-taken together, this public health crisis and its attendant economic downturn appear poised to dwarf the scope, scale, and disruptiveness of most modern pandemics. What evidence we do have about other modern pandemics is largely limited to short-run impacts. Consequently, recent experience can do little to help us anticipate and respond to COVID-19's potential long-run impact on individuals over decades and even generations. History, however, offers a solution. Historical crises offer closer analogues to COVID-19 in each of its key dimensions-as a global pandemic, as a global recession-and offer the runway necessary to study the life-course and intergenerational outcomes. In this paper, we review the evidence on the long-run effects on health, labor, and human capital of both historical pandemics (with a focus on the 1918 Influenza Pandemic) and historical recessions (with a focus on the Great Depression). We conclude by discussing how past crises can inform our approach to COVID-19-helping tell us what to look for, what to prepare for, and what data we ought to collect now.

Keywords: COVID-19; Early-life health; Human capital; Long-run effects; Pandemics; Public health; Recessions; Scarring.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Fig 1
Fig. 1
U.S. log real GDP per capita with major epidemics highlighted, 1790-2020 Notes: Annual GDP per capita data for 1790 through 2019 are taken from https://www.measuringworth.com. Quarterly real GDP per capita data for 2019 and 2020 are taken from https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA and deflated to 2012 dollars to match the historical data. Code to generate the figure and the underlying data for it can be found at Open-ICPSR (see Arthi and Parman, 2020; https://doi.org/10.3886/E125441V1).
Fig 2
Fig. 2
Case fatality rate as a percentage by basic reproduction rate for various diseases Notes: Case mortality rates are for untreated patients. For COVID-19, basic reproduction rates are taken from https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0282_article. All other reproduction and fatality rates are taken from https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kHCEWY-d9HXlWrft9jjRQ2xf6WHQlmwyrXel6wjxkW8/edit#gid=0 (the data underlying https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/ng-interactive/2014/oct/15/visualised-how-ebola-compares-to-other-infectious-diseases), accessed on June 15, 2020. The code and data needed to generate the figure are available at Open-ICPSR (see Arthi and Parman, 2020; https://doi.org/10.3886/E125441V1).
Fig 3
Fig. 3
Unemployment rate and COVID-19 cases in the U.S. by state over time Notes: The insured unemployment rate is based on employees covered under unemployment insurance as reported to states by employers. COVID-19 cases are relative to the entire state population. Unemployment data were retrieved from https://oui.doleta.gov/unemploy/claims.asp. COVID-19 data were retrieved from https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data. The code and data needed to generate the figure are available at Open-ICPSR (see Arthi and Parman, 2020; https://doi.org/10.3886/E125441V1).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Acemoglu D., Johnson S., Robinson J.A. The colonial origins of comparative development: An empirical investigation. Am. Econ. Rev. 2001;91(5):1369–1401.
    1. Acuna-Soto Rodolfo, Viboud Cecile, Chowell Gerardo. Infuenza and pneumonia mortality in 66 large cities in the United States in years surrounding the 1918 pandemic. PLoS One. 2011;6(8):e23467. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Alfani Guido. Plague in seventeenth-century Europe and the decline of Italy: An epidemiological hypothesis. Eur. Rev. Econ. History. 2013;17(4):408–430.
    1. Alfani Guido, Murphy Tommy. Plague and lethal epidemics in the pre-industrial world. J. Econ. History. 2017;77(1):314–343.
    1. Almond Douglas. Is the 1918 influenza pandemic over? Long‐term effects of in utero influenza exposure in the post‐1940 U.S. population. J. Polit. Econ. 2006;114(4):672–712.