The effect of QE on social equality

The European Central Bank has pointed out that its aggressive monetary policy, quantitative easing (QE), helped vulnerable people more than the rich during the financial crisis, in response to the critics about QE widening the social inequality. The ECB claimed that the QE program had lifted economic growth and inflation  and created more jobs and these achievements had helped the "hand-to-mouth" households. The research (https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/scpwps/ecb.wp2170.en.pdf?15cfb0c4a4e166bc411c39fa3b9f8d17) finds that "hand-to-mouth households are either entirely unaffected or negatively exposed to interest rate risk, i.e. they experience a gain in net financial income after a monetary policy easing" while other households' incomes are negatively affected by lower real returns.

From this research, we find that it is not always for "hand-to-mouth" households to be benefited from the QE program. Of course, the monetary easing can reduce other households' savings and real capital returns; however, they are also benefited from income increases created by the QE program. I find the result from the research is rather vague in terms of social inequality. The wealthy households may be not wealthy enough. The wealthy households in the research are definitely not the very top 0.1% or 0.01%; for these households, their investments are not concentrated in where they live, they can have assets all over the world, so the measures in the research can be imprecise. Additionally, the research does not seem not to take into account of the long term accumulation of wealth. If the QE program helps to recover the economy, it means the capital returns increase again and the wealth gap will be again widened even possibly beyond the pre-crisis level. More importantly, the QE program does not fundamentally change the structure of the economy and or the employability of the hand-to-mouth people; therefore, in the future, their wealth will still be falling behind.