Average decline in material hardship during the pandemic conceals unequal circumstances : findings from the December 2020 well-being and basic needs survey Karpman, Michael, author. Zuckerman, Stephen, author. COVID-19 -- economics Public Assistance -- economics Unemployment -- statistics & numerical data More than one year after the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a sharp economic contraction, millions of adults remain unemployed. 1 Congress has responded to the crisis with several relief packages to mitigate the impact of the recession on families’ abilities to meet their basic needs. In this study, we assess how material hardship changed during the first year of the pandemic, between December 2019 and December 2020. We also explore the recession’s unequal impacts and the association of job and income losses with hardship. Our analysis provides the first probability-based national survey estimates of changes in material hardship from a prepandemic baseline. We used data from the Urban Institute’s Well-Being and Basic Needs Survey (WBNS), a nationally representative annual survey of more than 7,500 adults ages 18 to 64, to estimate these changes. Despite a steep drop in employment, we find the share of nonelderly adults reporting food insecurity and problems paying utility and medical bills declined between 2019 and 2020. However, this average change obscures the substantial hardships among families who lost work during the pandemic. Safety net programs and pandemic-related income supports likely prevented even more severe deprivation among families who lost jobs and income and provided buffers against hardship for many other families, improving the average adult’s ability to meet their family’s basic needs. Washington, DC : Urban Institute, April 2021 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, issuing body. Urban Institute, issuing body. Technical Report Text Illustrations 1 online resource (1 PDF file (16 pages)) nlm:nlmuid-9918316886806676-pdf 9918316886806676 http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/9918316886806676 English United States Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY-NC-DC license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0