COVID-19 - Nuffield College Oxford University

Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Nuffield members and their colleagues have been using social science methods to examine some of the big questions about the spread of COVID-19.

From 'nowcasting' mortality rates to assessing the usefulness of face coverings, the climate impacts of the pandemic to providing support for families adjusting to lockdown conditions, Nuffield Fellows, students and their research has shaped some of the biggest conversations about the world during coronavirus.

Read more about Nuffield research, including links to papers, below, or expert comment in the media and other media appearances on the dedicated page.

Innovation in the creative industries

23 July 2021: Andrew Thompson writes a policy paper based on his work on the creative industries during the pandemic for the Boundless Creativity project.

One million orphans, so far

20 July 2021: Lucie Cluver helps model the number of children orphaned or who lost their caregivers to COVID-19.

The value of robust forecasts

23 June 2021: Jennifer Castle, Jurgen Doornik and David Hendry make the case for robust statistical forecasting.

The effect of lockdowns on public attitudes

18 June 2021: Andy Eggers estimates the effect of the pandemic on public attitudes to the government’s responses.

Unequal experiences of remote schooling

17 June 2021: Mobarak Hossain investigates inequality in experience of remote schooling during the pandemic in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam

The efficacy of non-pharmaceutical interventions

11 June 2021: Tobias Rüttenauer assesses data on COVID-19-related deaths and non-pharmaceutical interventions.

Trust, conspiracy beliefs and social media in vaccine hesitancy

3 June 2021: This paper, co-authored by Melinda Mills, looks at the links between trust, conspiracy beliefs, social media and vaccine hesitancy.

Willingness to take part in COVID tracing apps

3 June 2021: Dirk Witteveen examines willingness to participate in a COVID-19 tracing app.

Tackling COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy

2 June 2021: Melinda Mills joins co-authors to outline the ‘five Cs’ needed to tackle vaccine hesitancy.

Social distancing, politics and wealth

17 May 2021: Ben Ansell, Asli Cansunar and Mads Elkjaer examine political, economic and demographic factors that are linked to social distancing compliance.

Gathering COVID data

15 May 2021: The COVerAGE-DB project – which includes José Manuel Aburto – aims to provide up-to-date, transparent and open-access data on the key demographic…

Learning inequality during the pandemic

27 April 2021: Per Engzell and Mark Verhagen use data from the Netherlands to evaluate the effect of primary school closures on student progress.

Estimating COVID-19 earnings losses in Europe

22 April 2021: In this INET working paper, Brian Nolan estimates the earnings losses of households in the Euro Area.

Young people’s experience of the South African lockdown

22 March 2021: Lucie Cluver and coauthors look at the experience of lockdown for South African adolescents and young people.

Life expectancy gains reversed during COVID-19

7 March 2021: José Manuel Aburto, Melinda Mills, Ridhi Kashyap, Charles Rahal and Jennifer Beam Dowd and coauthors find that life expectancy at birth has…

School Policy Preferences in the UK

3 March 2021: Ben Ansell, Jane Gingrich and co-authors examine their findings on policy approval from their two-wave survey in the UK.

The Long-Term Societal Impacts of COVID-19

March 2021: Melinda Mills, Xuejie Ding and Jennifer Dowd on the long-term impacts of the pandemic.

Vaccine acceptance in the UK

23 February 2021: Ben Ansell and Jane Gingrich discuss findings from their two-wave survey in the UK.

Geographic variation in mortality

23 February 2021: Richard Breen and John Ermisch look at data from 1 March to 31 July 2020, finding links between population density, ethnicity and COVID-19…

Vaccine passports

14 February 2021: Melinda Mills presents twelve criteria for the development and use of COVID-19 vaccine passports in this Royal Society pre-print report.

Learning from the UK’s response to COVID-19

18 December 2020: Gus O’Donnell puts forward a five-part framework that assesses the UK’s poor performance in the face of coronavirus.

Using Facebook surveys during a public health emergency

14 December 2022: Francesco Rampazzo assesses the advantages, challenges and practicalities of using Facebook-advertised surveys during public health…

Trust in science and experts during COVID-19 in Italy

11 December 2020: Ridhi Kashyap and Valentina Rotondi examine the changing pattern of trust in experts and science in Italy during the pandemic.

Estimating excess deaths and COVID-19's impact on life expectancy

9 December 2020: A preprint on medRxiv estimates the impact of COVID-19 on mortality rates and life expectancy in England and Wales, coauthored by Jose Manuel…

Distributing the COVID-19 vaccinations

8 December 2020: Melinda Mills lays out the challenges of distributing the COVID-19 vaccinations.

COVID attitudes report

December 2020: Fellows Jane Green and Geoffrey Evans and DPhil student Dan Snow analyse newly released data from the British Election Study on public attitudes…

Work, care and gender during COVID-19

30 November 2020: A paper by Barbara Petrongolo which uses data from Understanding Society study to examine the effects of COVID-19 restrictions on the paid and…

Furloughing

30 November 2020: Abi Adams-Prassl, Marta Golin and their co-authors analyse the workers who were furloughed in the UK in April and May and the terms of those…

Economic damage in the UK vs the US

27 November 2020: A new preprint from Charles Rahal, Jennifer B. Dowd and Melinda Mills compares the extent of the economic damage resulting from the COVID-19…

Health and inequality

26 November 2020: Jennifer Dowd, Xuejie Ding, Evelina Akimova and Melinda Mills summarise current knowledge about inequalities in the burden of COVID-19…

Pandemics and fertility: evidence from 1918

23 November 2020: Felix Tropf, Nicolò Cavalli and Melinda Mills use data from the United States during the 1918 influenza pandemic to understand how a pandemic…

The evidence on face-coverings from Sweden

20 November 2020: Melinda Mills and Jan O. Jonsson and their co-authors evaluate the evidence provided by the Swedish Public Health Agency to support the…

Coping with labour market shocks

14 November 2020: Hamish Low expands on his previous work with the Understanding Society COVID-19 Study to identify those groups most affected by economic…

Effective penalties for violating lockdown

12 November 2020: Seung Hoon Chae assesses whether the imposition of fines in Germany can help mitigate the spread of coronavirus using a quasi-experimental…

Economic hardship and mental health

3 November 2020: Dirk Witteveen finds that lower-paid workers have suffered more economic hardship and related mental health complaints during the pandemic,…

Short-term forecasting of COVID-19 deaths

27 October 2020: An online forecasting tool for coronavirus deaths over the short-term, compiled by members of the Climate Econometrics team.

Misinformation and behaviour in COVID-19 vaccine deployment

21 October 2020: Melinda Mills writes in this rapid review about the behavioural aspects of vaccine uptake and misinformation.

The market-reach of pandemics: evidence from Ethiopia

14 October 2020: Christian Meyer shows a dramatic impact of the pandemic on the employment of women in the industry, including loss of work, migration and food…

Gender differences in experiencing economic hardship

6 October 2020: Mobarak Hossain takes evidence from Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam to examine the differences between men and women’s experiences of economic…

Public perception of government responses

5 October 2020: Francesco Billari and colleagues develop a method called COVID-SCORE, a global survey where participants rate their government’s response to the…

Measuring population vulnerability across England

29 September 2020: Nicolò Cavalli works with coauthors from the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences and from further afield to create an index…

The geography of excess deaths

9 September 2020: Richard Breen and John Ermisch expand their work on the geography of excess deaths during the peak months of COVID-19 in the UK in this…

Economic hardship and sociodemographic inequality in the UK

6 September 2020: Dirk Witteveen uses data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study COVID-19 Supplement to assess how exposed different earnings and…

The effect of an unequally ageing population

28 August 2020: José Manuel Aburto examines the implications of Europe’s unequally ageing population on the course of the pandemic and fatalities in this brief…

Do people lie about social distancing?

24 August 2020: Using two separate surveys of Danish citizens, Jacob Nyrup looks at whether individuals under-report their non-compliance to lockdown…

Learning from previous recessions

August 2020: Mihai Codreanu coauthored a Centre for Economic Performance working paper on the lessons that can be learned from previous recessions for the…

Inequality in the impact of COVID-19 on the labour market

31 July 2020: Abi Adams-Prassl and Marta Golin use real-time survey responses in the UK, US and Germany to assess the inequalities of the impact of the pandemic…

The COVID-19 pandemic and human fertility

24 July 2020: Nicolò Cavalli and coauthors assess the likely impacts of the pandemic on fertility levels.

Potential future coronavirus hotspots

28 June 2020: Mark Verhagen and co-authors from the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science highlight the areas at risk of a future spike in cases of COVID-19…

Young woman shopping in a grocery store and wearing protective medical mask

The effectiveness of facemasks

26 June 2020: Melinda Mills, Charles Rahal and colleagues the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, review the existing scientific literature on the…

Work that can be done from home

16 June 2020: Abi Adams-Prassl and Marta Golin look at the variation in workers’ ability to perform their tasks from home across countries, occupations,…

What is the possible pandemic course in Africa?

11 June 2020: Jennifer Beam Dowd and Melinda Mills examine the likely course of the pandemic in the 18 countries of the African Research Network as well as…

The individual effects of the COVID-19 economic shock

4 June 2020: Hamish Low uses data collected in a COVID-19 survey of existing members of the 'Understanding Society' study to document the different effects of…

Social network-based distancing strategies post-lockdown

4 June 2020: Nuffield Associate Members and Charles Rahal, Ridhi Kashyap and Melinda Mills examine the efficacy of three different distancing strategies using…

The impact of COVID-19 on Ethiopian women in the garment industry

2 June 2020: Christian Meyer documents the ways COVID-19 is impacting Ethiopian women working in the country's largest industrial park.

Mapping lockdown to Brexit data

28 April 2020: Ben Ansell has brought together Google Community Mapping data for the UK and the UK's Brexit voting data in this GitHub to allow political…

Inequality in the impact of coronavirus

28 April 2020: A working paper and a set of briefing notes by Abi Adams-Prassl, Marta Golin and co-authors about the unequal impact of the economic shock of…

Now-casting hospitalised COVID-19 deaths in England

17 April 2020: The number of deaths reported in the media comes with a reporting delay. Bent Nielsen has been working on 'now-casting' recent deaths with…

Demography and age-specific mortality

16 April 2020: By examining the role of age structure in deaths in Italy and South Korea, Jennifer Dowd and Nuffield co-authors illustrate how the pandemic…

Parenting in a time of COVID-19

25 March 2020: Lucy Cluver and collaborators have produced a set of evidence-based resources for parents dealing with school closures and the increased strain…

Mapping hospital demand in England and Wales

21 March 2020: The Leverhulme Centre team have produced an online tool that identifies parts of England and Wales that are at higher risk of being overwhelmed…