The Class Gap in Pandemic Attitudes and Experiences

Attitudes towards COVID-19 and lived experiences during the pandemic depended greatly on people’s level of education. This study extends a previous analysis of vaccine hesitancy as a function of formal education and examines additional indicators from the COVID-19 Trends and Impacts Survey for the United States during 2021–2022. The monthly values for social and health-related activities and constraints, testing and vaccination decisions, and information-seeking behaviours, as well as trust and beliefs, often varied markedly between education-defined classes. Many indicators present a significant gap between the attitudes and experiences of better-educated groups, represented by college/university graduates and those with post-graduate studies, on the one hand, and less-educated groups, including those with only high school or some college education, on the other hand. These patterns suggest that the academic and professional-managerial classes, which supply the vast majority of societal decision-makers, may be ill-equipped to understand and respect the needs and worries of the working class in an emergency situation such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Given growing concerns about the benefit–harm balance of many government policies, a more inclusive pandemic response could have been achieved by respecting and adopting the common sense, scepticism, and outright opposition of the less-educated groups vis-a-vis restrictions and public health measures.