The Pandemic Paradox : How the COVID Crisis Made Americans More Financially Secure

**Why most Americans’ finances improved during the worst economic contraction since the Great Depression—and the policy choices that made this possible** In March 2020, economic and social life across the United States came to an abrupt halt as the country tried to slow the spread of COVID-19. In the worst economic contraction since the Great Depression, twenty-two million people lost their jobs between mid-March and mid-April of 2020. And yet somehow the finances of most Americans improved during the pandemic—savings went up, debts went down, and fewer people had trouble paying their bills. In __The Pandemic Paradox__, economist Scott Fulford explains this seeming contradiction, describing how the pandemic reshaped the American economy. As Americans grappled with remote work, “essential” work, and closed schools, three massive pandemic relief bills, starting with the CARES Act on March 27, 2020, managed to protect many of America’s most vulnerable. Fulford draws from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's “Making Ends Meet” surveys—which he helped design—to interweave macroeconomic trends in spending, saving, and debt with stories of individual Americans’ economic lives during the pandemic. We meet Winona, who quit her job to take care of her children; Marvin, who retired early and worried that his savings wouldn’t last; Lisa, whose expenses went up after her grown kids (and their dog) moved back home; and many others. What the statistics and the stories show, Fulford argues, is that a better, fairer, more productive economy is still possible. The success of pandemic relief policy proves that Americans’ economic fragility is not an unsolvable problem. But we have to choose to solve it. "In March 2020, economic and social life across the United States came to an abrupt halt as the country tried to slow the spread of COVID-19. In the worst economic contraction since the Great Depression, twenty-two million people lost their jobs between mid-March and mid-April of 2020. And yet somehow the finances of most Americans improved during the pandemic--savings went up, debts went down, and fewer people had trouble paying their bills. In The Pandemic Paradox, economist Scott Fulford explains this seeming contradiction, describing how the pandemic reshaped the American economy. As Americans grappled with remote work, "essential" work, and closed schools, three massive pandemic relief bills, starting with the CARES Act on March 27, 2020, managed to protect many of America's most vulnerable. Fulford draws from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's "Making Ends Meet" surveys--which he helped design--to interweave macroeconomic trends in spending, saving, and debt with stories of individual Americans' economic lives during the pandemic. We meet Winona, who quit her job to take care of her children; Marvin, who retired early and worried that his savings wouldn't last; Lisa, whose expenses went up after her grown kids (and their dog) moved back home; and many others. What the statistics and the stories show, Fulford argues, is that a better, fairer, more productive economy is still possible. The success of pandemic relief policy proves that Americans' economic fragility is not an unsolvable problem. But we have to choose to solve it."--Amazon.com Contents 7 1 Introduction 11 Part I The Pandemic Economic Collapse 25 2 The Bottom Falls Out 25 3 Making Ends Meet before the Pandemic 50 4 The CARES Act 74 Part II The Pandemic Settles In 107 5 Muddling Through 107 6 Pandemic Relief after the CARES Act 131 7 Left Behind, Again 160 Part III The Pandemic’s Aftermath 195 8 Work from Home: The Past and Future of Work 195 9 The Long Term 216 10 Struggling Back to (a New?) Normal 241 11 The Pandemic Paradox 278 Epilogue: October 2022 306 Acknowledgments 309 Notes 311 Index 373