COVID-19 within families amplifies the prosociality gap between adolescents of high and low socioeconomic status

COVID-19 has had worse health, education and labor market effects on groups with low socio-economic status (SES) than on those with high SES. Little is known, however, about whether COVID-19 has also had differential effects on non-cognitive skills that are important for life outcomes. Using panel data from before and during the pandemic, we show that COVID-19 affects one key non-cognitive skill, i.e., prosociality. While prosociality is already lower for low-SES students prior to the pandemic, we show that COVID-19 infections within families amplify the prosociality gap between French high-school students of high- and low-SES by almost tripling its size in comparison to pre-COVID-19 levels.

COVID-19对低社会经济地位（SES）群体在健康、教育和劳动力市场方面的影响远甚于对高SES群体的影响。然而，关于COVID-19是否对对生活结果至关重要的非认知技能也产生了差异化影响，目前所知甚少。利用疫情前后面板数据，本研究揭示了COVID-19影响了一项关键的非认知技能，即亲社会性。尽管在疫情爆发前，低SES学生的亲社会性水平已经较低，但本研究发现，家庭内部的COVID-19感染加剧了法国高中生中高SES与低SES学生在亲社会性方面的差距，其影响程度几乎是疫情前水平的近三倍。