As the United States grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the National Academy of Social Insurance formed a COVID-19 Task Force consisting of two Working Groups that deliberated in two phases. The first phase was the Epidemiology Working Group. Chaired by Academy Member Dr. Neil Powe, Professor of Medicine at the University of California – San Francisco, the Epidemiology Working Group issued its report, Understanding COVID-19’s Outcomes and Possible Trajectory: Implications for Social Insurance Programs in May 2021.
The second phase of the COVID-19 Task Force was the Policy Translation Working Group, formed in 2021. It was co-chaired by Academy Founding Board Member Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution and Academy Member Katherine Baicker, until recently Dean of the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy and now Provost of the University of Chicago. Academy Member Louise Sheiner, Senior Fellow and Policy Director at the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution, served as Principal Investigator. Its report, Social Insurance during the Pandemic: Successes, Failures, and Policy Options for the Future, can be downloaded here.
The report describes and evaluates the performance of the nation’s social insurance system during the pandemic and highlights its successes as well as its shortcomings. As is well known, the U.S. social insurance system helps protect individuals and families from risks to their economic well-being. Even in normal times, the social insurance system mitigates the harms caused by unemployment, illness, aging, and other forces that affect household finances. However, in times of crisis like the pandemic, the U.S. social insurance system becomes even more important.
This report assesses the performance of pre-existing social insurance and related programs, temporary changes in those programs made in response to the pandemic, and some new federal and state policies. It addresses the following critical questions:
- What temporary measures, specifically addressing short-term crises, would have worked better to protect people?
- What changes in permanent policies or administrative practice might be considered based on the successes or failures of policies and practice in the pandemic emergency and recovery?
- What kinds of additional data collection might have produced better and more useful knowledge about the successes and failures of specific policies and administrative practices?