Objective: To identify the socioeconomic and demographic factors associated with the prevalence of self-reported long-COVID symptoms.Method: We examined the association between acute-COVID (SARS-CoV-2) and long-COVID symptoms, by a cross-sectional analysis of data obtained on a prospective online-survey, conducted from November to December 2021 on a nationally-representative sample of the Israeli population (N = 2,246).Results: Findings suggest that there is a greater likelihood of experiencing long-COVID symptoms among low-income and among marginalized groups. After controlling for demographic and socioeconomic attributes, those who had moderate/severe acute-COVID were 1.3 (p < 0.05) times more likely to experience a long-term symptom and also reported more long-term symptoms (2.2 symptoms) than those who have not been infected (1.4 symptoms; p < 0.01). Among the low-income group, a larger gap in symptom count was found between those who had moderate/severe acute-COVID (3.3 symptoms) and those who had not been infected (1.8 symptoms, p < 0.05).Conclusion: Our findings highlight the importance of raising awareness of long-COVID among marginalized population groups, and to the therapeutic options available. Such efforts should be tailored and should consider the unique socioeconomic and cultural characteristics, as well as the preexisting low access to healthcare services among these groups.
With shorter durations and fewer barriers to entry, reskilling programs may serve as vehicles for social mobility and equity, as well as tools for creating a more adaptive workforce and inclusive economy. Nevertheless, much of the limited large-scale research on these types of programs was conducted prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, given the social and economic disruptions spurred by the pandemic, our ability to understand the impact of these types of programs in recent labor market conditions is limited. We fill this gap by leveraging three waves of a longitudinal household financial survey collected across all 50 US states during the pandemic. Through descriptive and inferential methods, we explore the sociodemographic characteristics related to reskilling and associated motivations, facilitators, and barriers, as well as the relationships between reskilling and measures of social mobility. We find that reskilling is positively related to entrepreneurship and, for Black respondents, to optimism. Moreover, we find that reskilling is not merely a tool for upward social mobility, but also economic stability. However, our results demonstrate that reskilling opportunities are stratified across race/ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status through both formal and informal mechanisms. We close with a discussion of implications for policy and practice.
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