Abstract We examine trends in employment, earnings and incomes over the last two decades in the United States, and how the safety net has responded to changing fortunes, including the shutdown of the economy in response to the COVID‐19 pandemic. The US safety net is a patchwork of different programmes providing in‐kind as well as cash benefits, and it had many holes prior to the pandemic. In addition, few of the programmes are designed explicitly as automatic stabilisers. We show that the safety net response to employment losses in the COVID‐19 pandemic largely consists only of increased support from unemployment insurance and food assistance programmes, an inadequate response compared with the magnitude of the downturn. We discuss options to reform social assistance in the United States to provide more robust income floors in times of economic downturns.

中文翻译：

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COVID-19 和美国安全网*

摘要 我们研究了美国过去二十年的就业、收入和收入趋势，以及安全网如何应对不断变化的命运，包括经济因 COVID-19 大流行而停摆。美国的安全网是由提供实物和现金福利的不同计划拼凑而成的，在大流行之前存在许多漏洞。此外，很少有程序被明确设计为自动稳定器。我们表明，对 COVID-19 大流行中就业损失的安全网响应主要仅包括增加失业保险和粮食援助计划的支持，与经济衰退的程度相比，这种响应不够充分。