Life after lockdown: managing inequalities

摘要

Policy-makers and politicians face a tough challenge working out how to manage the aftermath of the coronaviru: because of the sheer patchwork quilt of its impact says the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). While local control of the crisis, including local lockdowns, has been floated as a means of managing geographic variations in the scale of the virus, the question is whether local authorities can manage the process and whether they have the necessary funding. And what happens about variations within a local authority area, let alone between them? The IFS, in its recent study The geography of the COVID-19 crisis in England points out that its 'findings on the geography of the crisis suggest policy-makers and politicians are in for a difficult time' in deciding policy responses. Vulnerability to tackling the aftermath of the crisis is widely varied across local areas in the key three aspects of health, jobs and family vulnerability. The variation is not necessarily just on socio-economic grounds, although the local authority areas most vulnerable do tend to be more deprived and with older populations than the average. Local areas in the highest quintile of death rates have experienced 2.4 times more deaths per 10,000 of the population than local areas in the lowest quintile. There is no simple North/South or urban/rural divide in the way that the COVID-19 crisis is affecting health, jobs and families across England.