The COVID-19 pandemic changed many aspects of people's everyday lives, and the political ramifications are still being felt. The widespread and significant disruptions imposed by the pandemic put people who were in or near poverty in an even more difficult situation. In Poverty in the Pandemic: Policy Lessons from COVID-19, Zachary Parolin uses a wealth of data to examine the ways in which poverty influenced the pandemic, how U.S. government actions during the pandemic affected poverty, ways to rethink common measures of poverty, and policy lessons learned.

Because there is no general agreed-upon way to measure poverty, this book takes on a challenge that faces many studies looking at this issue. One of the central contributions of the book is to not only examine poverty from a number of different angles that are common (e.g., employment, income) but also from areas that are often overlooked (e.g., mental health, childcare). Moreover, because one of the most common ways to measure poverty is a yearly measure, the government's Supplemental Poverty Measure has certain benefits, but also many drawbacks—one of the primary ones being that it is a once-yearly snapshot, even though disruptions, such as those many faced during the pandemic, like school closures or loss of employment, can have a significant impact on one's economic well-being.