VoxEU Webcast

Race and Covid-19: The long-run impact of discrimination

Graziella Bertocchi (University of Modena & EIEF) uses a detailed individual-level dataset from Cook County, Illinois, to explore the relationship between COVID-19 mortality and race. Not only are Black Americans disproportionally affected by COVID-19, but they also started to succumb to it earlier than other groups. Such asymmetric effects can be traced back to racial segregation introduced by discriminatory lending practices in the 1930s.