Disparities in health and life expectancy by income had been a central challenge for the United States. The highest-income American men had lived nearly 15 years longer on average than the lowest-income American men; the corresponding gap for women had been 10 years. 

The COVID-19 pandemic amplified these disparities by income, race, and other dimensions. Unfortunately, there had been a lack of information on how mortality rates due to COVID-19 varied with individual income, as available U.S. population mortality data lacked information on income. The absence of this information had hindered the ability to monitor the impacts of COVID-19 and develop policies to mitigate its impacts, particularly on disadvantaged and underserved populations, going forward.

This project resolved these challenges by constructing a new public database of mortality rates incorporating socioeconomic and demographic variables and covering the entire U.S. population. Using these data, researchers were able to analyze the sources of disparate impacts of COVID-19 on mortality across subgroups, with the aim of understanding how to reduce health inequality in the pandemic and beyond.