Earnings Losses and the Role of the Welfare State during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Sweden

Arbeitspapier

Many governments introduced temporary adjustments to counter the economic and health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. We study the importance of already existing government transfers and pandemic measures to mitigate individual income losses during the pandemic in Sweden using a difference-in-differences approach and population-wide data on monthly earnings and government transfer payments. We find that labor earnings dropped by 2.7 percent in 2020. Existing transfers and pandemic measures reduced earnings losses to 1.5 percent. These average effects mask considerable differences in income losses, which were, by and large, evened out by existing transfers and pandemic measures.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 15662

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions ; Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity ; Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue: General ; Crisis Management ; Single Equation Models; Single Variables: Panel Data Models; Spatio-temporal Models
• Subject: COVID-19 ; income inequality ; government transfers ; short-time work

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Adermon, Adrian ; Laun, Lisa ; Lind, Patrik ; Olsson, Martin ; Sauermann, Jan ; Sjögren, Anna
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2022

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/267399
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:45 AM CET