ONE IN EIGHT American adults in December reported going hungry during the previous week. This was, according to the Census Bureau's regular surveys, the worst result of the final three months of 2020. That tracked other measures of financial distress-the share of Americans estimated to be in poverty or reporting difficulties paying for housing-which have increased as the covid-19 epidemic entered a third, wintry phase and chilled the economic recovery. The burden has been felt most by the disadvantaged: in households with less than $25,000 in income, 32% of adults reported having to miss meals in the past seven days. More than 40% of black and Hispanic renters have little to no confidence in being able to pay for housing in the coming month. All this-to say nothing of the death toll of the virus, which is now above 330,000- got worse while Congress debated for seven months whether the economy needed more support. The big fiscal stimulus passed in March, costing $2.2trn, made a real and measurable dent in hardship in the first months of virus-induced lock-downs. One-time cheques of $1,200 for most American adults and generous top-ups of $600 a week to unemployment benefits were part of a temporary experiment with a European-style safety-net. Government expenditure in 2020 increased by about 50% compared with the previous year, easily the greatest increase since 1963, when the Congressional Budget Office started counting. The result was that the savings rate among families went up, not down. Poverty was probably cut by 15%, the biggest one-off reduction recorded since measurement began.
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