The coronavirus pandemic is straining social safety nets across the globe and underlining sharp differences in approach between wealthy societies such as the United States and Europe.
In Europe, the collapse in business activity is triggering wage support programmes that are keeping millions on the job, for now. In contrast, in the United States more than 33.5 million people have applied for jobless benefits and the unemployment rate has soared to 14.7 per cent.
Congress has passed USD 2 trillion in emergency support, boosting jobless benefits and writing stimulus checks of up to USD 1,200 per taxpayer.
That is a pattern seen in earlier economic downturns, particularly the global financial crisis and the Great Recession. Europe depends on existing programmes kicking in that pump money into people's pockets.
The US, on the other hand, relies on Congress taking action by passing emergency stimulus programmes, as it did in 2009 under President Barack Obama, and the recent rescue package under President Donald Trump.
Economist Andre Sapir, a senior fellow at the Bruegel research institute in Brussels, said budget policy in the US plays partly the role that Europe's welfare system plays because the American welfare system is less generous and a recession can be much harsher on workers.
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In downturns, US employees can lose their health insurance if they lose their job and there's also a greater risk of losing one's home through foreclosure. On the other hand, Europeans typically pay higher taxes, meaning they earn less in the good times.
In the US you need to keep pumping money into the economy so that people continue to be employed, because it is through being employed that they are protected," said Sapir.
"Which is the better system? I'm not going into that discussion because that is really a huge issue. The US tends to rank below average on measures of social support among the 37 countries of the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation, whose members are mostly developed democracies.
The US came last in people living in relative poverty, meaning living on half the median income or less, with 17.8 per cent. Countries like Iceland, Denmark, the Czech Republic and Finland have less than 6 per cent.
Here's a look at how the social safety nets of the U.S. and Europe compare: UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS
And there's Europe's short-hours programs, which pay most of worker salaries if companies put them on shorter hours through a temporary disruption. More than 10 million workers are being paid that way in Germany and about 12 million in France, helping hold eurozone unemployment to only a 0.1 percentage point increase in March over February, to 7.4 per cent
HEALTH INSURANCE
MATERNITY BENEFITS