This chapter shows that COVID-19 death rates were more than twice as high in areas of high deprivation as in less deprived areas. This is due, firstly, to a greater likelihood of contracting COVID-19 and then, secondly, to a greater vulnerability to its effects. Those with lower incomes are more likely to be key workers and to use public transport, exposing them to greater risk. This is compounded by a greater vulnerability to serious illness as underlying health conditions linked to deprivation – cardio-vascular disease, obesity and diabetes – interact with the virus. These co-morbidities often affect whole families, including those living in multi-generational households, increasing disease transmission. The higher death rates of the BAME population are discussed, alongside the structural discrimination and potentially direct racism that may have played into this.

The chapter continues with an analysis of the inadequacies of the benefit system as an insurance against hard times, and the likely long-term consequences of the poverty and destitution that will follow, especially in more deprived northern regions. It then focuses on the ‘COVID generation’ scarred by the loss of education and work, by unequal access to home learning, and carrying a mental health burden into the future.

Chapter 6 discusses how lobbying by lenders in the U.S. Senate resulted in a vitally important missed opportunity to give a life-line to millions facing foreclosure through bankruptcy reform. Bankruptcy forgiveness could have been an immediate and highly effective strategy to deal with the millions of home foreclosures. It has become increasingly evident that, paraphrasing the words of Audre Lord, the “master’s mortgage tools,” the mortgage products and financial services that precipitated the crisis, many of which continue today, and the abusive conduct underpinning subprime lending, is a story of racism. The predatory lending resulted in massive destruction of the African-American dream of home ownership that will take decades to recover from. Yet both financial and policy responses to the crisis continue to use the same financial structures, the same market tools, and the same market players. As long as reform only tackles regulatory change that “tinkers”+L9 at the edges of the structural problems, there is unlikely to be systematic relief from inappropriate exercise of power and unlikely to be any meaningful justice for the millions of individuals harmed by predatory lending.

Chapter 5 presents the argument for why and how the United States should reimagine the EITC. Drawing on social science research, it argues that the framing of social benefit programs matters, both to recipients and to the general public. It makes the case for splitting the EITC into two distinct parts, as other scholars and policy makers have proposed in the past: (1) a work-support credit to offset the regressive nature of payroll or self-employment taxes; and (2) a family-support credit to offset poverty. It proposes decoupling EITC delivery from the tax return filing process. Drawing upon ideas from Canada and New Zealand, the chapter also proposes more radical changes, such as determining income based on household composition rather than marital status, allowing parents who share custody to share the credits, and adjusting the size of the credits regionally or locally according to cost of living.