abstract: 'G. Montalvo and Marta Reynal-Querol?>Official statistics on economic

  inequality are only available at low frequency and with considerable

  delay. This makes it challenging to assess the impact on inequality of

  fast-unfolding crises like the COVID-19 pandemic, and to rapidly

  evaluate and tailor policy responses. We propose a new methodology to

  track income inequality at high frequency using anonymized data from

  bank records for over three million account holders in Spain. Using this

  approach, we analyse how inequality evolved between February and

  November 2020 (compared to the same months of 2019). We first show that

  the wage distribution in our data matches very closely that from

  official labour surveys. We then document that, in the absence of

  government intervention, inequality would have increased dramatically,

  mainly due to job losses and wage cuts experienced by low-wage workers.

  The increase in pre-transfer inequality was especially pronounced among

  the young and the foreign-born, and in regions more dependent on

  services. Public transfers and unemployment insurance schemes were

  effective at providing a safety net to the most affected segments of the

  population and at offsetting most of the increase in inequality.

  Increased inequality is primarily driven by differential changes in

  employment rate. Indeed, using individual-level regressions, we find

  that, over the course of the pandemic, the probability of being employed

  decreased drastically for workers in the lower part of the pre-COVID

  wage distribution, young cohorts and foreign-born.'
affiliation: 'Aspachs, O (Corresponding Author), Caixabank Res, Lisbon, Portugal.

  Aspachs, Oriol, Caixabank Res, Lisbon, Portugal.

  ICREA UPF, Pamplona, Spain.

  BSE, Barcelona, Spain.

  IPEG, Barcelona, Spain.

  CESifo, Munich, Germany.

  UPF, Pamplona, Spain.

  CEPR, Washington, DC USA.'
author: Aspachs, Oriol and Durante, Ruben and Graziano, Alberto and Mestres, Josep
  and Montalvo, Jose G. and Reynal-Querol, Marta
author_list:
- family: Aspachs
  given: Oriol
- family: Durante
  given: Ruben
- family: Graziano
  given: Alberto
- family: Mestres
  given: Josep
- family: Montalvo
  given: Jose G.
- family: Reynal-Querol
  given: Marta
da: '2023-09-28'
doi: 10.1093/epolic/eiac008
earlyaccessdate: FEB 2022
eissn: 1468-0327
files: []
issn: 0266-4658
journal: ECONOMIC POLICY
keywords: D63; E24; J31
language: English
month: MAR 3
number: 109, SI
number-of-cited-references: '25'
orcid-numbers: Montalvo, Jose G./0000-0003-4161-5055
pages: 165-199
papis_id: 30b123305cbf04777ea181d5e6f6e9b4
ref: Aspachs2022realtimeinequality
researcherid-numbers: Montalvo, Jose G./D-6731-2013
times-cited: '7'
title: 'Real-time inequality and the welfare state in motion: evidence from COVID-19
  in Spain'
type: article
unique-id: WOS:000763590900001
usage-count-last-180-days: '0'
usage-count-since-2013: '7'
volume: '37'
web-of-science-categories: Economics
year: '2022'