Moderate social distancing yields $8 trillion in economic benefits, study finds Christopher Ingraham 5 days ago
When it comes to fighting the coronavirus, three-quarters of Americans say it is more important to save lives, even if the economy suffers, according to a recent YouGov poll.
The Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City has been turned into a temporary hospital during the coronavirus pandemic. (Angus Mordant/Bloomberg News)
But in the past week, we’ve heard a lot from others expressing the opposite view — many that are evidently well represented on the nation’s op-ed pages and in its halls of power. The lieutenant governor of Texas set off a firestorm by suggesting that older Americans should be willing to sacrifice their lives to save the economy, which has been devastated as businesses shutter to stem the virus’s spread and people stay home.
But in many respects, the either-or choice is a false one. A new working paper from Michael Greenstone and Vishan Nigam of the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute for Economics underscores that the two goals are complementary. A regimen of moderate social distancing, like what many areas of the country are doing now, has the potential to save well over a million lives.
And those saved lives are worth $8 trillion to the U.S. economy.
The paper takes as its starting point a coronavirus forecast published by Neil Ferguson and others at London’s Imperial College Covid-19 Response Team. The analysis concluded that, left unchecked, the virus would kill 2.2 million people in the United States.
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