The initial health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic were unequal across social groups, and disparities in the economic impact of COVID-19 amplified existing economic inequalities and health gaps. When faced with health and economic challenges, Americans often relied on family members, including those who were not coresident, to provide time help, financial assistance, and shared housing. Yet, for many disadvantaged Americans, the increased need for help from family came at a time when the ability of family to provide help was diminished. Public transfers designed to alleviate economic hardships of the pandemic interacted with family transfers, but the combined effects remained unknown. Despite the interdependence of health and economic challenges across generations and the effect of family support on health outcomes in the face of challenges, most research on pandemic effects focused on individuals and households.

This project filled this gap in the research by creating a multidimensional contextual database linked to the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to examine the effects of the pandemic across generations of American families. The HRS and PSID collected data on the health and well-being of individuals and their family members for decades, including supplements on COVID-19 health and economic challenges and on public and private transfers to combat these challenges. These studies continued indefinitely to support an understanding of the health impacts during and in the years following the pandemic. The project enhanced these data by building a contextual database on the pandemic linkable to the generations of families in the HRS and PSID across dimensions of exposure to risk; state, local, and school policies; local economic conditions; health care availability; preexisting health factors; and structural inequalities.