Terrier, Camille, Chen, Daniel L. and Sutter, Matthias (2021) COVID-19 within families amplifies the prosociality gap between adolescents of high and low socioeconomic status. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), vol. 118 (n° 46). pp. 1-6.

Abstract

COVID-19 has had worse health, education, and labor market effects on groups with low socioeconomic status (SES) than on those with high SES. Little is known, however, about whether COVID-19 has also had differential effects on noncognitive skills that are important for life outcomes. Using panel data from before and during the pandemic, we show that COVID-19 affects one key noncognitive skill, that is, prosociality. While prosociality is already lower for low-SES students prior to the pandemic, we show that COVID-19 infections within families amplify the prosociality gap between French high school students of high and low SES by almost tripling its size in comparison to pre–COVID-19 levels.