Trump's former White House chief economist says coronavirus so far has cost $8,074 per household

The estimate includes the estimated costs of coronavirus deaths and effects of the economic shutdown.

Published: April 29, 2020 11:47am

Updated: April 30, 2020 1:47pm

The deadly coronavirus so far has cost $8,074 per household, says Casey Mulligan, former White House chief economist under President Trump.

The estimate includes the projected costs of coronavirus deaths and effects of the virus-related economic shutdown. Mulligan, an economics professor at the University of Chicago, has a new website, titled CoronavirusCosts.com tracking the daily economic cost of the virus response. 

 

Image
PandemicCosts.com
Estimate of Coronavirus Pandemic Costs
Casey B. Mulligan, Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago
The referenced media source is missing and needs to be re-embedded.

"The cumulative costs through April 28, 2020, were $8,074 per household ($1.0 trillion in aggregate)," Mulligan stated Wednesday on his website. "26 percent of these are mortality costs (valued at $4.3 million VSL; over the past seven days, the percentage was 27). The rest are the market and non-market costs of shutting down the economy, for the categories documented by Mulligan (2020). The costs above do not necessarily reflect the drop in stock prices, because much of that drop indicates costs expected to be incurred after April 28."

Mulligan has questioned the structure and size of government coronavirus relief packages, including the $2.2 trillion package adopted last month, along with an additional nearly $500 billion package adopted last month.

"Roughly half of all U.S. workers stand to earn more in unemployment benefits than they did at their jobs before the coronavirus pandemic brought the economy to a standstill," Mulligan tweeted Tuesday.

Tweet URL

Mulligan served as chief economist of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under Trump and as a visiting professor teaching public economics at Harvard University, Clemson University, and the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago. The Wall Street Journal named Mulligan "The economist who exposed Obamacare."

The Facts Inside Our Reporter's Notebook

Links

Other Media

Image
PandemicCosts.com
Estimate of Coronavirus Pandemic Costs
Casey B. Mulligan, Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago

Unlock unlimited access

  • No Ads Within Stories
  • No Autoplay Videos
  • VIP access to exclusive Just the News newsmaker events hosted by John Solomon and his team.
  • Support the investigative reporting and honest news presentation you've come to enjoy from Just the News.
  • Just the News Spotlight

    Support Just the News