COVID-19, Police Violence, and Educational Disruption: The Differential Experience of Anxiety for Racial and Ethnic Households

BACKGROUND: The threat of a deadly pandemic, racial tension, recessionary economic circumstances, and educational disruption likely contributed to the heightened anxiety felt by many Americans in 2020. This study examines the differential anxiety experienced by Black, White, and Hispanic households with and without children during 2020. METHOD: Data from the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey detailing the frequency of anxiety among a nationally representative sample of adults from April 23 to December 21, 2020, was coupled with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention records of COVID-19 diagnoses and state-level police killings. Multinomial logistic regression assessed the relative contribution of COVID-19 deaths, police violence, unemployment, fear of unemployment, change in educational delivery, and geographic location to anxiety among racial/ethnic cohorts with and without children. RESULTS: Anxiety frequency increased over the sample for all groups. However, White anxiety was highly responsive to state-level COVID-19 fatalities, while Black anxiety was highly correlated with police violence. Households with children showed higher levels of anxiety during nontraditional educational delivery, whereas both households with and without children experienced high levels of fear regarding employment uncertainty and poverty. CONCLUSIONS: Experiences in 2020 impacted all groups differently, but each showed a high frequency of anxiety.