The budgetary measures implemented by states have contained the increase in poverty and income differences during the health crisis. On the other hand, it has exacerbated certain non-monetary inequalities and the discomfort of health professions.
by Marie Charrel
To what extent did COVVI-19 dug inequalities? How did he altered living conditions in Europe? Are the effects comparable from one country to another? Three years after the start of the pandemic, it is always difficult to answer these questions firmly, “both because the data still lacks that because their analysis is delicate”, warns Louis Maurin, director of the observatory of inequality.
A handful of studies and figures published for a few months are nevertheless beginning to provide partial lighting. Following the example of those revealed Friday January 13 by Eurostat: the coefficient of Gini, measuring – very imperfectly – the level of income inequalities (100 represents the most extreme inequality threshold) Indeed, hardly evolved between 2019 and 2021: despite the recession generated by the COVID-19, it remained around 30 on average in the European Union (EU). With large shades depending on the country: it has thus increased a little in Greece (from 31 to 32.4 between 2019 and 2021) or in Portugal (from 31.9 to 33), but dropped to Ireland (from 28.3 to 26.9).
These figures echo those published in October 2022 by INSEE . The health crisis has complicated the measurement of the development of poverty, warns the Institute, with great caution. Nevertheless, everything suggests that it, like income inequalities, remained almost stable in 2020 in France, around 14.3 % of the population.
If the analysis of the effects of the pandemic is particularly complex, it is that the shock caused by it and by the restrictions of displacement, brutal and relatively short, has been very different from previous crises. “That of 2008 first struck construction and industrial production, where jobs are very male, while the 2020 recession mainly affected services, more feminized”, recalls Blandine Mollard, of the European Institute for the ‘Equality between men and women (Eige).
Result: if in 2020 employment rates fell significantly for both sexes, the pandemic has worsened the preexisting disadvantages for women, show the work of the Eige. They were thus more affected by the decrease in working hours and have more frequently fallen into inactivity: 6 % of women in employment before the crisis became inactive during the pandemic, against 4 % of men. In addition, variations are large depending on the country: 13 % of the Spaniards came out of employment in 2020, a record in the EU, against only 5 % of Maltese.
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