Poor people proved especially vulnerable to economic disruption during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, which highlighted the importance of poverty reduction as a policy concern. In this article, we explore the politics of poverty reduction during the COVID-19 crisis in Canada and the United States, two liberal welfare-state regimes where poverty reduction is a key policy issue. We show that, since the beginning of the pandemic, policies likely to reduce poverty significantly have been adopted in both Canada and the United States. Yet, this poverty reduction logic has emerged in different ways in the two countries—with the United States embracing more significant departures from its policy status quo. This situation leads us to ask the following question: in each country, what are the political conditions under which public policies susceptible of reducing poverty are enacted? To answer this question, we study the politics of poverty reduction both before and during the pandemic, as we suggest that grasping the evolution of partisan and electoral patterns over time is necessary to explain what happened during the pandemic, whose impact is closely related to how it interacts with such patterns. Our analysis suggests the need to consider more carefully the impact of both crises and partisanship on social policy, including poverty reduction.

中文翻译：

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加拿大和美国的 COVID-19、减贫和党派关系

事实证明，在冠状病毒病 (COVID-19) 大流行期间，穷人特别容易受到经济破坏的影响，这凸显了减贫作为一项政策关注的重要性。在本文中，我们探讨了加拿大和美国在 COVID-19 危机期间的减贫政治，这两个自由福利国家制度将减贫作为关键政策问题。我们表明，自大流行开始以来，加拿大和美国都采取了可能显着减少贫困的政策。然而，这种减贫逻辑在两国以不同的方式出现——美国接受了与其政策现状的更大背离。这种情况导致我们提出以下问题：在每个国家，制定易于减少贫困的公共政策的政治条件是什么？为了回答这个问题，我们研究了大流行之前和期间的减贫政治，因为我们建议掌握党派和选举模式随时间的演变对于解释大流行期间发生的事情是必要的，其影响与如何它与这种模式相互作用。我们的分析表明，需要更仔细地考虑危机和党派偏见对社会政策（包括减贫）的影响。正如我们建议的那样，掌握党派和选举模式随时间的演变对于解释大流行期间发生的事情是必要的，其影响与它如何与这些模式相互作用密切相关。我们的分析表明，需要更仔细地考虑危机和党派偏见对社会政策（包括减贫）的影响。正如我们建议的那样，掌握党派和选举模式随时间的演变对于解释大流行期间发生的事情是必要的，其影响与它如何与这些模式相互作用密切相关。我们的分析表明，需要更仔细地考虑危机和党派偏见对社会政策（包括减贫）的影响。