While COVID-19 was responsible for more than 600,000 deaths worldwide as of July 24, 2020, very little is known about the socioeconomic heterogeneity of its impact on mortality. In this paper, we combine several administrative data sources to estimate the relationship between mortality due to COVID-19 and poverty at a very local level (i.e. the municipality level) in France, one of the most severely hit countries in the world. We find strong evidence of an income gradient in the impact of the pandemic on mortality rates, which is twice as large in municipalities below the 25th percentile of the national income distribution than in municipalities above this threshold. We then show that both poor housing conditions and higher occupational exposure play a key role in this heterogeneity: taken together, these mechanisms account for up to 77% of the difference observed between rich and poor municipalities.

No abstract

While COVID-19 was already responsible for more than 500,000 deaths worldwide as of July 3, 2020, very little is known on the socio-economic heterogeneity of its impact on mortality. In this paper, we combine several administrative data sources to estimate the relationship between mortality due to COVID-19 and poverty at a very local level (i.e. the municipality level) in France, one of the most severely hit country in the world. We find strong evidence of an income gradient in the impact of the pandemic on mortality: it is twice as large in the poorest municipalities compared to other municipalities. We then show that both poor housing conditions and higher occupational exposure are likely mechanisms. Overall, these mechanisms accounts for up to 60% of the difference observed between rich and poor municipalities.

Works councils provide an essential mechanism for worker participation in decision‐making. While the literature has extensively explored their impact on worker and establishment outcomes, the negotiation process between works council representatives and their employer has remained largely unexplored. This article contributes to filling this gap by investigating wage discrimination towards works councilors in Germany. Fixed effects models leveraging panel data show that councilors receive a wage premium that positively correlates with the sectoral coverage of collective bargaining. In the manufacturing sector, where the tradition of bargaining is heavily entrenched, employers positively discriminate councilors. In contrast, in the service sector, where the culture of bargaining is weak, employers penalize works councilors. In both sectors, partisan and unionized works councilors are the most affected. The most likely hypothesis to explain these results is that employers strategically discriminate these councilors in order to bypass the traditional constraints of establishment‐level participation. This article therefore questions the quality of industrial democracy in Germany.