Almost 20% of US households lost their savings during the pandemic

For many Americans – having nowhere to go or nothing to do – the quarantines imposed by the COVID they were a time saver. But for nearly 20% of American households, the pandemic wiped out their entire financial cushion, according to the results of a survey released Tuesday.

The proportion of respondents who said they lost all of their savings rose to 30% for those earning less than $ 50,000 a year, according to the survey by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. The homes of Black and Latino families were also hit the hardest. The researchers surveyed a nationally representative sample of 3,616 American adults ages 18 and older.

Avenel Joseph, a vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said many people turned to their savings to cover health care or children’s expenses. “When a crisis hits, or something is out of the norm — for example, your son gets sick — your salary is sacrificed,” he said. Nearly two-thirds of households making less than $ 50,000 a year said they had trouble paying rent, health care and food.

About two-thirds of the people surveyed said they received financial help from the government in recent months. But 44% said those programs “only helped a little.”

“We always knew there was going to be an uneven recovery,” Joseph said. “The safety net always had holes, and the pandemic it expanded them even more ”. Lawmakers are currently debating in Congress how much to spend to shore up the safety net in the future.

“Congress has a great opportunity to chart a more equitable future for this country. It’s not about propping up bank accounts, ”Joseph said. “Failure would cause millions of families who got out of poverty thanks to social assistance to fall back into it.”