ArticleNature human behaviour2026
Premature termination of unemployment benefits increased COVID-19 transmission and deaths in the USA.
Article in Nature human behaviour, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Expanded unemployment insurance (UI) during the COVID-19 pandemic protected livelihoods, but it may also have saved lives by incentivizing physical-distancing behaviour. We estimate UI effects on weekly COVID-19 outcomes using regression-adjusted difference-in-differences and exploiting cross-state variation in the USA during summer 2021. We find that all outcomes more than tripled in states discontinuing pandemic UI programmes: weekly cases rose 0.18 percentage points (95% confidence interval, 0.07-0.28), hospitalizations rose by 0.18 per 1,000 (0.09-0.27), COVID-19 deaths rose by 2.72 per 100,000 (1.23-4.21) and excess deaths rose by 4.60 per 100,000 (2.82-6.39). The results show no pre-trends, pass 'placebo' tests and are robust to alternative sets of control variables, inverse-probability weighting, and heterogeneity in policies, behaviours and political leanings. Supporting a causal interpretation, UI claims fell and re-employment rose in discontinuer states, COVID-19 worsened where re-employment rose more, the COVID-19 death share of under-65-year-olds grew and illness-related lost work time increased. Additional hospitalization costs exceeded UI outlays. COVID-19 deaths rose by 25,100 (11,400-38,900) and excess deaths by 42,600 (26,100-59,100): deaths without benefits.
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