Recent research by MPC Faculty Member Elizabeth Wrigley-Field demonstrates that “US racial inequality may be as deadly as COVID-19.” In an article published in the September 8 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Wrigley-Field uses historical data to estimate that, for white mortality in 2020 to rise to the best mortality ever recorded among Blacks, the COVID pandemic would need to produce 400,000 excess white deaths. Based on her findings, Wrigley-Field argues, “[I]f Black disadvantage operates every year on the scale of Whites’ experience of COVID-19, then so too should the tools we fight to deploy it.”
For more information, read the full open access article in PNAS, and check out media coverage by npr.org, Slate, and New York Times.