Poverty Reduction is Not the Whole Story: The COVID-19 Pandemic Response in Relation to Material Hardship

As an absolute measure of deprivation poverty fails to capture the impact pandemic-related disruptions had on households. In this study, we use data from the Ypsilanti COVID-19 Study, a cross-sectional survey of 609 residents taken during the summer of 2020, to control for pandemic-related disruptions on bill-paying and food hardship. Using logistic regression models in which specific forms of bill-paying (i.e. late paying rent, late paying utilities) and food hardships (i.e. eating less over 7 days, worried food will run out) served as dependent variables, we find that disruptions to household finances, particularly job loss, significantly increased the likelihood of experiencing bill-paying and food hardship, respectively. Our study also controls for the type of hardship experienced to see which strategies households employed during the pandemic to exit material hardship. Through logistic regression models on methods of exiting material hardship, we find the type of hardship experienced was not predictive of applying for either SNAP or UI. Moreover, we find UI was less accessible to low-income individuals experiencing hardship. The findings from our study elaborate the relationship between pandemic-related disruptions and material hardship, and indicate to policymakers that preventing hardship in the first place is much more meaningful to households than attempting to use policy to bring households out of hardship once they experience it.