Spatial inequality through the prism of a pandemic: Covid-19 in South Africa

While the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic made everyone feel very vulnerable, the pandemic has made manifest the significant gaps between individuals in terms of exposure and in terms of the capacities to cope with such a major shock. The onset of the pandemic has seen a very active and promising response from quantitative social scientists attempting to use available household and labour market surveys to assist in framing evidence-informed emergency and longer-run policy responses. This paper implements two basic profiling frameworks in the South African context using the 2018 General Household Survey and the 2016 Community Survey.