Groups put at Particular Risk by COVID 19 (GaPRisk)

• Applicants: Dr. Claudia Hövener; Professor Dr. Oliver Razum; Professor Dr. Carsten Schröder; Professorin Dr.-Ing. Sabine Zinn
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research ; Public Health, Healthcare Research, Social and Occupational Medicine ; Economic Policy, Applied Economics
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 458299140

The Covid-19 pandemic poses numerous societal challenges. We will examine how it affects distinct social and at-risk groups in Germany, what it implies for societal inequalities, and what role welfare state measures play. First, we will describe the situation of the population before and during the pandemic in the health and the socio-economic domain. In each domain, we will study a set of core outcomes (e.g., physical and psychological health in the first domain; household income and frequency of social contacts in the second). We will describe levels of and inequalities in outcomes both for the overall population and for at-risk groups. Second, we will examine the implications of Covid-19-related policies in the health and the socio-economic domain to identify policies that have proven beneficial and will recommend policies that could be implemented in combination with these to mitigate unintended side-effects. To achieve these aims, our interdisciplinary team will apply descriptive and causal statistical techniques, taking advantage of regional variation in policies and infection rates and small-area estimation. We will use a unique integrated dataset, comprising: (a) the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP); (b) SOEP-CoV, providing detailed information on the pandemic-related situation of about 6,700 SOEP respondents in the 2nd quarter of 2020; (c) blood and saliva tests from approx. 20,000 SOEP respondents (collection starting in Sept. 2020 in collaboration with Robert Koch Institute (RKI)).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants