Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to worsen inequality because it will strike at the livelihoods of the poorer segments of the population more significantly. This is because the pandemic is likely to accelerate labour-saving technical progress and further skew rewards towards the skilled, as well as leading to further concentrations of wealth and the share of capital in GDP. Earlier pandemics, which had higher mortality rates often had more equalizing effects as the share of wages rose, at least temporarily. Inequality is closely associated with the globalized rules of economic governance; this gives rise to more nationalist, populist political success, concealing further plutocratic prospects. There is evidence that populist governments mismanaged the pandemic more than autocratic or democratic states.
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Murshed, S.M. (2022). The COVID-19 Pandemic, Economic Inequality and Democracy. In: Goulart, P., Ramos, R., Ferrittu, G. (eds) Global Labour in Distress, Volume II. Palgrave Readers in Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89265-4_9
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